Melissa's Place

Face-what?

I have held off on doing the facebook-dissing blog for several reasons. First of all, it makes me seem old and uncool to not just be lapping up these “social tools” and ways to waste my time (for the record, I have a Neopet named Gazuntheit and I LOVE wasting time earning Neopoints in Neoworld!). Secondly, I think it’s probably been done – you know – the whole rant-against-facebook and my-space and what-is-this-world-coming-to bit.

Anyway, my blog is less about distaste or dislike for facebook and more about awe and wonder. I understood the premise at first – we look up people we haven’t seen in a long time (and sometimes share no similarities with any more) and we drop a message of sheer delight OH-MY-GOD-HOW-HAVE-YOU-BEEEEEEEEEEN? And spend a few more messages gossiping about who’s married and who has kids and who’s already divorced and who finally got out of that god-foresaken town and who didn’t, then go back to mostly unrelated parallel existences.

THEN, I discovered that people share pictures on facebook. Well, THAT seems like a pretty good reason to sign up. You get to see friends’ pictures and their lives. Then you can see friends of friends through pictures and see who’s gotten fat and who’s finally cleaned himself up and who’s got a ring on her finger etc. You can see who is traveling the world. And you can be reminded, through tagged pictures, of people you once were friends with and then add THEM to your friends list. Then you get more and more friends added to your facebook friends list and you start to feel a lot more popular than you ever were in high school.

Now, I never became completely adept at navigating the facebook webpage. I kind of understand posting stuff on a friend’s wall and sending them messages, but the part where I get confused is when people start to send me gifts. They send me free gifts like noodle bowls and pictures of cups of tea. That’s nice. Getting a gift is always nice. But I’m not completely sure what I DO with the gifts except that maybe I just accumulate and display them on my profile page along with my plethora of friends. Then I began to receive plants that start off just looking like a mysterious pot but later bloom into flowers. This is quite fun. This social tool of making each other feel loved with virtual houseplants.

And there are games too! There are quizzes to see if you’re similar to someone else based on whether you prefer to go wind surfing in the Carribean or bungee jump from a skyscraper or gnaw your own leg off at the knee or sit at home and pick your nose on a Saturday night. People share songs with me and they tell me their favourite movies and write book reports on facebook. They can do anything through facebook. Why would you even leave the house any more?

And today, I even received a strawberry daiquiri through facebook.
It was virtually delicious!