3 posts tagged “facebook”

There are some people who I really wonder about, made more interesting by the fact that I do not know them.  Oprah is one.  Rachael Ray is another. (Sandra Lee is also another but she gets her own post--and has on this blog already.) Back to Rachael. We've watched said perky, non-chef, cookery maid change already simple but lovable "American" cuisine for the worst by introducing the concept of 30-Minute Meals which allows us to revel in dishes like "Zangy* Hot Dog Nachos" (ugh...a conundrum for me because I shamelessly LOVE both components but love them for who they are separately...c'mon) or "Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy Chili...which is regular chili with a completely asinine adjective attached.  I'm begging you not to get me started on the aforementioned adjectives that, upon reaching my ears, create such intense rage I feel the only way to deal with it is violence. (EVOO, GB, WTF...that last one's mine).

Of course, I blame Bob Tushman--who belongs in the 7th circle of Hell with fellow blood-traitors to the human race Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin (thrown in really just as a Cheney torture device)--who I firmly believe will get his in the end.  But back to Rachael.  Here's the shameless part.  After giving us 279082908374 episodes of meals full of carbs, saturated fat upon saturated fat (see "Zangy Hot Dog Nachos"), all the while calling them healthy because there's some vegetable presence, she's peddling a diet plan...on Facebook. AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!  As if I haven't seen enough of the cookbooks, the spices, the pots and pans, the television show, the magazine, the dog food (I'm not kidding).  Now we need a diet plan and why?  Because her original claim to this world, giving us healthy quick meals, has actually failed.  Turns out "rootin' tootin'" is just another way to say "McDonalds". So, does she admit that things didn't work out the way she thought?  No.  She saves us with her awesomely unique diet plan based on the brilliant principles of "eat less" and "exercise."  Thank God for RR. 

I'm beginning to wonder how to really respond to this phenomenon which is becoming a real issue.  Now that we've got all of these flash-in-the-pan celebrities who are famous only on personality without any discernable talent or skills...how do we stop it.  I say it's a two-prong attack.  Put the credit card away and turn off the tv.  Apathy, people.  The answer isn't anger and resistance.  I think it's apathy.  Maybe if we just don't care, she'll go away. This'd take care of Billy Mayes and the Luna people too. 

*Um, of course, "zangy" is a fun combo of the words "zesty" and "tangy"; one such linguistic device that has eaten away at our already sad grammar and vocabulary prowess in this country.  And it infuses an implied level of fun into this food that I find objectionable.       

Since I've started this newfound life of progress and productivity, my days are a virtual whirlwind of chores and boring things that "must be done" lest I fall back into the deep, dark hole of despair. Given that I don't pine to return to that hole of all holes, I go ahead and busy myself with things mostly all day.  But then 5 o'clock hits, I'm productively done for the moment (or roughly next 3 hours) and I have one more hour to go before I can go home, put the tootsies up, and bask in the one hour of television glory that is "Chuck."  What's a girl to do?

Enter Facebook.

I just forcibly stopped myself from trolling through other's lists of friends looking for people I didn't know were on this thing to be-Facebook-friend.  What stopped me was my realization that I didn't feel good about the activity.  Not only is it aggressively not productive, but it's invasive. Once again, I have to ask if we should ever have the ability to do this.  If it weren't for Facebook, would I call my friends and be like, "Hey, can I have a list of your friends' phone numbers so I can go ahead and give 'em a call.  Y'know, to see if they want to be my friend?"  Yikes.  That's the stuff of stalkers.  And yet here I am, trolling.  What may be worse is that Facebook has magically erased a couple of important relationship-relevant boundaries.  I used to teach in high school.  Over the past week or so, a lot of former students have found me.  Honestly, I couldn't be more delighted...they're grown-ups now and possibly interesting and if they don't mind calling me a friend, who am I to question it?  We spent a lot of growing-up time together (and that's for all parties involved...including Teacher Katie).  But, because of this new category of friends, I can now troll through their friends and see who's out there and, marginally, what they're doing.  I feel like it might actually be unethical. And then I think maybe I just need to loosen up.  And then I think, no, it's weird and not totally right.

I'm all for self-censorship and I am in no way asking for regulations or controls put on where I can and cannot go on the interwebs, but it's hard to resist the temptation of curiosity.  I can troll for friends all day if I want.  I won't (the pit of despair, remember?) but it's hard not to. It's moments like these when I wonder how that age-old "story" of how tough life is will go.  Our grandparents or maybe parents even always start with, "When I was a kid, I walked to school both ways...in the snow...with no shoes...uphill..." (we all know this story...apprently, the world's been getting flatter, warmer, and better clothed since the old days).  What will mine sound like?

"When I was young I had to stop myself from trolling for friends on facebook...for twelve hours a day...at work...because they disabled my flash player...and I couldn't get the other fun games that help time go faster...like YouTube."  

About a year ago (I think), I reluctantly agreed to join Facebook.  Up to that point, it was a scary, unknown world of social networking on the interwebs.  I was nervous.  What if I got stalked or something?  We've all heard the poignant stories on Maury that somehow also always involve a paternity and a lie-detector test.  Since brazenly embracing this site (which took all of about 12 minutes), I continue to marvel at how cool it is especially in its ability to distract me in multiple ways simultaneously and still make me feel socially productive.  I find myself wondering how, exactly, I ever lived with Facebook (cue the Trisha Yearwood version of "How Did I Live Without You.")

The distraction factor is really second to none. I love cruising status updates (every five minutes) and I find a special kind of fulfillment in becoming a "fan" of something.  One little click and I've made a definitive statement about something I want to support...even if it is Oscar the Grouch.  It doesn't matter.  I've taken a stand.  I've recently become enamored with writing notes about things.  All of this type of activity traveled through the Blogosphere (which is different than Blagosphere...but is a term I'm surprised I didn't see this week) in which I'd write random lists of weird facts about myself.  On my blog, it's fun.  Four people might read it.  On Facebook, chances are many more than 4 see it.  Even if they don't want to.  It's aggressive but in a benign way.

But, most interesting to me is my newfound abilities to 1) stay in touch with people way longer than I would if I had to rely on e-mail or phone-calls alone and 2) to maintain contact with people who don't fit into the neat and finite categories of "I'm gonna give them a call."  I find that with my very close friends, Facebook can be somewhat annoying.  It forces me to keep a safe distance and writing on their wall seems overly superficial given the nature of our usual discussions.  But Facebook allows me to maintain contact with people who, under any other circumstances, would likely fall by the wayside because they exist in that weird "in-between" social space.  Not friendly enough to e-mail but more than an acquaintance.  So, I can SuperPoke my dissertation advisor or choir people I talk to once a year and somehow that's not only appropriate but encouraged.  I can share my bookshelf with those people I knew junior year in college but haven't talked to since then.  And I can re-find and catch up with people from a variety of phases in my life...and then feel validated in the fact that we've moved on. Somehow, it's one of the greatest and most interesting forms of networking I've ever done.  It somehow recognizes the level of social involvement that I want to have with people I know.  While there are some I want to be very close to, Facebook gives me a forum in which I can just simply "keep in touch" with those that, for whatever reason, I have some distance from at this point in time.  And it allows that distance to be okay.  And it's easy.

All of this and Scrabulous (now called Lexulous) too.  What more could a procrastinating social butterfly ask for?