
Recently I have joined the ranks of the Facebook friendly. This is a big deal. Maybe not to you, but it is monumental for me. It is one of the things that I made the mistake of saying "never" about. I truly was never going to Facebook.
My 180• turn on this issue has me in contemplative mood. I have been delving deeper into what motivates myself and others to use this and other social networking sites.
I know why I initially joined Facebook. Ostensibly it was to give myself access in order to start a page for work. My Cafe Today location could use a little more exposure, and I volunteered my time to make that happen. So, joining was easy. Then I started "friending" people.
Make "friends" on Facebook is easy too. The act of clicking on the "send friend request" button takes no time at all. The thing is, I quickly realized that there was more to it than that. My mind tells me that linking my personal information with another person through a public website is simply one more exchange of 1's and 0's that we see all around us everyday. For some strange reason, however, actively seeking out people that I know was more impacting than I anticipated. For most of my "new friends" we never even exchanged words, and yet during the process I continued to hear the old AT&T tag-line "Reach out and touch someone" in my head. I could feel myself reconnecting emotionally with memories I had of these people, some of whom I haven't talked to in years.
It occurred to me that this was a big part of it. Notice what I just said at the end of the last paragraph. I was connecting to the memories that I had, not the people themselves. Connecting to friends was a nostalgic walk down memory lane. I have been very busy lately, and it felt good to stop down and reconnect ( even if only nominally), to people that I have known in my life. A rare reason to slow down and reminisce.
Today I was reading Burton Farley's travel blog which I found through a link that he posted on Facebook. Things like this make me realize that, going forward I believe Facebook could be a valuable tool for someone like me. I look on this, sort of distant fellowship with others, with blissful ignorance today. Skeptics might say that it could rob me of my motivation for real human interaction with these people, but before I simply had no contact. I did not know Burt and Christine were even in Norway, for example. So, as of now, I will soak up the experience and hope that I will have more common ground with my "friends" the next time we chance to meet in person.
- Posted from my iPhone