You know, I used to get annoyed at those friends who’d delete their Facebook accounts.
Only to re-friend request me a week later.
#OhhhNice…YouLeft?
To be fair, I had a right to. Most of the time – for them – it was preceded by a whole long status update tantamount to a social media “Goodbye Cruel World” note. (“So long! I’m off to the infinite abyss of not sharing my life online! It looks a lot like 2003! Or whenever Zuck met the Captain America Row clones”)
But now, I’m kinda seeing the appeal in rebooting your whole profile every so often. There’s admittedly a kind of nostalgia that I get whenever I start looking through the memories I’ve made through the years. The partying I used to do. The friends I’ve drifted away from. Holidays. Selfies I don’t recall taking. And it seems like too much work to filter that – or my old posts with thoughts I don’t still believe or venting I had no idea would eventually vex my future self. But I’m starting to get how all’a that’s not worth the pleasure that might come from throwing a Molotov cocktail at your online profile.
Especially when yet another creepy Facebook feature’s coming up:
The keyword-search.
Not just for leisurely stalking old interactions with ease, this feature will make for an excellent “he said-she said” tool during relationship arguments and cyclical online debates which go absolutely nowhere except an infinite derisive vacuum with no victor. That “graph” thing is bad enough – and I was kinda waiting for the day this would happen. But the idea that even the things on which you’ve tapped a “like” button can be made accessible is unsettling, also. I mindlessly do that. If it made me laugh – however dark or morbid it was – you, sir, will likely get a like from me in the form of an iconic thumbs-up.
Right before I have to go explain myself to a prospective employer like a kid sent to the principle’s office, totally not expecting to get pinned for throwing wads of wet toilet tissue at the ceiling of the girls toilet. The rebuttal I hear to this is, “Lots of complaints about a FREE service, here.” Yeah, it’s a free service. No monetary charge. But money isn’t the only currency there is. I prefer the level of privacy I mistakenly thought I was being granted when I signed up. Me making that mistake was built into the fine print, I suppose. But if I have to sacrifice privacy right down to the “like” button is it really free?
A rhetorical inquiry which begs the self-directed one – why do I keep it, then?
So, who’ll re-add me when I blow up my profile Durden style and start over?
#IamJacksNewAccount #IletJackWorkForTheMan