Yes, I do confirm Fido as a friend.
And our common friends are Milo, Jagger, Bentley, Charlie, Chi Chi Mia and, of course, Jacki. And I would not be surprised if they truly appear on my Facebook screen requesting confirmation of our friendship, or filling in the famous blank as in “Milo is eyeing the steak on the kitchen counter, ” “Jagger thinks there are too many children in this house now,” “Chi Chi Mia is longing for a pink Burberry doggy coat”, “Jacki is wondering why grown men run so much and so fast.”
Kidding aside, I was intrigued by a column in today’s El Pais of Madrid, by Elvira Lindo, who confesses she is on Facebook, loves Facebook, and then says that, if the world is all about dog and cat personalities, she is definitely a dog, always was and always will be.
“What makes me like Facebook so much,” she writes, “is that, as my friends know well, I follow anybody, typical dog behavior. I follow even people I don’t know, and some I should not follow at all, but I still do. I was like a dog as a child. As a journalist, I have access to the celebrities, yet I have always have had a preference for unimportant people. I am a collector of insignificant lives.”
I agree, Elvira, I grew up with dozens of cats around me, and my mother still reminds me that I had a little cat at the feet of my crib when I was born (yes, my father was a collector of cats of any color, and most of them insignificant). However, in terms of how I follow people, I am definitely a dog. My family ALL love dogs, so all of those mentioned above are the dogs that I see when I visit the households of the people I love.
But, back to Facebook. I, too, confess that I am there. Don’t ask me why, that doggie thing, I guess. I followed all my children and friends who are there. Nobody knows how many friends he has until he joins Facebook. Some of your friends you have never even met, and, in a world without Facebook, you would have never met them. Their world and your worlds are not in the same geographic area.
Some of those “friends” you sincerely hope you don’t encounter in the near future.
And some who ask that you confirm them to be friends, have never met you. Take the guy in Chile who insisted I confirm him as friend. I finally did, only to receive a message from him that read: HI, have we met before?
Go figure.
Facebook is an open door cafe, with no hostess at the door to find you a seat. Come as you are. From casual to formal, everyone welcome. The writing and the visuals on Facebook range from the absolutely idiotic (“Today I thought I was dreaming, but found out I was awake”), to the more personal and profound (“Watching the snow fall today in the back of my house, I began to feel a sense of purity, a remembrance of my virginal days, the ones I can’t get back”). Sometimes your friends send you tips, as did my friend Rachel in Nairobi when she wrote : “I just discovered that blue margartias can be medicinal.” Not to mention the cliff hangers, as in the case of my friend Roxana, who woke all us up this week with this: “Was sleepy when I got in the Metro this morning, but soon, the hunkiest of men appeared, a total stranger, but I cannot get him out of my mind”. Well, no follow up to that: Roxana, please, tell us, did you get on the same Metro the next morning. Was the stranger there? Did you two talk? Did he bump into you making you hear the bells? We will never know, because on Facebook, there are no sequels, only spontaneous exploits, many of which people probably regret having written to begin with. Once it is there , it is there for the world (or all your 2000 friends) to read.
Which is why I tell my friend Ron that, in my case, I divide the sharing of life into three activities:
I Facebook.
I blog.
I internalize the rest.
There is a vast difference between a blog and Facebook, however; someone once told me that blogs are written by people with big egos. This is subject to debate. However, I can say that those of us who write daily blogs attempt to stimulate discussions about topics we consider significant. Those who write in Facebook have no such pretenses. In a way they make the insignificant even more insignificant. Take these Facebook entries, for example: “Jeannie is going to the mall,” or “Peter is watching Larry King”.
Meet a Facebook drop out
And, talking about cats and dogs: Cat personalities do not gravitate towards Facebook.
Take my friend, Frank, for example. He is the only Facebook dropout I know. Lasted three days in there. When I asked why he was no longer entering the Facebook cafe space, he said: “Too much socializing; too much revealing of trivia; too much being on the spotlight.Not for me.”
And, so, the world will miss out on such statements as:
“Frank prepares to run 25 kilometers in the snow….”
So, for Frank, back to the feline position, lying on the couch and purrring his thoughts away——while the world will never share them.
What makes Facebook interesting to me is that, indeed, I can get tidbits of information about a number of people whom I care for, starting with three of my four children, all of whom meet at the Facebook station. I get more details from their dialogs with their Friends, than by direct conversations.
My daughter Elena’s sorority sisters (most of them married and young moms now) always provide me with good laughs, not to mention that Elena is good about posting photos of her three kids, a treat for Abo, no matter where I am. My daughter Ana’s full days with Frankie and Angelina are revealed powerfully thru her conversations. And, God, what a wonderful thing it was to read my kids’ 25 Things About Me. Even me, the dad, could have only listed 15, the other 10 were surprises. Thank you, Facebook. How did fathers manage before you arrived?
With son Mario I get the comical stuff. The guy is funny even when he does not try. Look for his best postings after 2 am, since this child never slept and never will. A night owl, he is at his most creative when the rest of the world sleeps and he has the Facebook Cafe to himself.
Yes, life at the Facebook Cafe is not perfect. My son Brian, who obviously must have a cat personality, does not partake of Facebook encounters, but his wife Michelle does. So does my daughter in law Tammy. Thru them, I know whether Max, Tyler, Bri Bri or Michael scored at a baseball or soccer game. And the photos always make my day.
Of course, I also get invitations to every possible cause. The latest is: Save the San Francisco Chronicle, for example. Oh, God, how I wish I could.
And, no matter what time zone I am in, or what part of the world, I can always count for my dear friend Marge to be having her Guinness (sometimes something stronger) at the Facebook Cafe. Marge loves it there, and we love to follow her from Tampa to Ireland and back.
Today, I am using TheMarioBlog to write about Facebook. Talk about connecting dots, as Ron would say. It is fun. It is easy to use. It is the ultimate social medium for us dog personality types who follow anyone who smiles and wants us to join him/her.
There are people who have Facebook written all over them, but still have not appeared. Pegie, why are you NOT on Facebook? You need to add this to your palette, pronto.
There are also those whom you THANK for sharing with the rest of us on Facebook. Like, Jason Fry, for example. Yes, he is a writer, and his one-sentence entries are always delightful. Like today’s:
Jason Fry and Joshua were out catching snowflakes on their tongues. He got grape and mint chocolate chip flavored ones. I just got water-flavored.
And there are some who would have never joined, as in the case of my late secretary, Martha, for whom exchanges that revealed too much were always hushed with a comment: That’s more information than we need.
What would Martha say if she read stuff on Facebook like:
“Mary is now sipping a glass of red wine, my third of the night,” or “Will someone define open relationship for me? My spouse and I are interested.”
And what about what I call “mood” sharing: “I woke up tired and depressed today.” (but not depressed enough to login to Facebook), or “As I face the day, I see a list of more things than I can accomplish” (well, but was Facebook interaction one of them?).
Martha would simply say, in her nonsense unforgettable style: Who truly cares? I can hear her saying: “Facebook is for people who like to talk about themselves and have too much free time in their hands.”
Martha, we miss your wisdom.
At the end of the day, however, Facebook has not replaced the face to face exchanges with the people you don’t need to confirm as friends, since they know you already confirmed them. With those, you share the things you internalize, those that you edit out of the blog and Facebook. It is a special category. No technology will ever go there.
Sometimes it is just logical and pure fun to live life as if these things had not been invented. Call it organic living.
But, please, don’t take the blog and my Facebook away!
TheMarioBlog posting #203