I have several friends, acquaintances, and family members who refuse to join Facebook (or any other social networking site). Others are on, but seldom sign in. They all say that they don’t have time to waste on such nonsense. One person said that she doesn’t have enough time to stay in touch with the people in the real world, never mind in cyberspace. Another told me that she does not want her private life and thoughts splashed all over the net.
I say hooey!
I love Facebook. I don’t play the millions of games it offers. I seldom take any of their quizzes (though I did take “which Canadian city suits you best—and ended up with Toronto even though I deliberately answered so the results would come out to Winnipeg—I think these quizzes are rigged).
What I do do on FB is look up old friends and relatives with whom I have lost touch, and in some cases were never in touch. I’ve had much success. I have found old classmates from high school I haven’t seen or heard from in 30 years. I’ve rediscovered college mates from Bar Ilan University who left Israel and lost touch. I’m now in contact with relatives, close and more distant, and we share news and pictures of our families, though, geographically, we are all so far apart. In addition, Facebook has allowed me to get to know some cousins who were either not yet born or were too young when I left Winnipeg, or who lived in a different city and I had never met.
The first high-school mate I found on Facebook, several years ago, told me that I had ‘set a record’ for being out of touch the longest and being the furthest away. I protested that I wasn’t out of touch – they were! I have since found several others, and they all seemed genuinely happy to hear from me, though our lives have taken such different paths. We’ve exchanged gossip, caught up with families, sent pictures.
I have one schoolmate friend who recently joined FB. I had actually been in touch with her off and on over the years. More off than on, to be honest. She gave me the names and emails of other friends, and now I’m in email touch with them too!
A college friend of mine whom I found, and lives in the US, invited me to his son’s Bar Mitzvah last summer at the Kotel. He had married another college friend. We had lost touch shortly after I moved to Beer Sheva 25 years ago. I traveled to Jerusalem that day with some trepidation, I must admit. I had aged, gained weight, and looked a bit older than my 21 years. What would they think of me? But I was excited to see them. At the Bar Mitzvah was yet another friend; – also on FB – who lives in Ra’anana. I hadn’t seen him since his wedding 23 years before.
I made two discoveries that day. The first was that – surprise!! – all these other people had aged too. The second was that it didn’t matter how much time had passed. The 27 years since we were last together faded away. We joked, we shared info on other college friends, we talked. There was no awkwardness, no embarrassment, no lack of what to say to each other. And my friends, I am happy to report, felt just as comfortable making fun of my height – or more precisely, lack of it – as they did 27 years ago.
And more. This year, those friends’ daughter is spending a year in Israel. We’ve just hosted her for Shabbat. I told her that I and her parents had been family, when none of us had family in Israel, and that by extension she could feel that she was now family, too. I was delighted and grateful to pay forward to the next generation a little of what I received back then.
So I say to all those who denigrate Facebook: Like most things in life, it is what you make out of it. I believe that no one can have too many friends or too much family (unless you have to wash their dishes or do their laundry – fortunately FB doesn’t have that technology yet).
I’m happy that the word friend has become a verb. (“Hey, you know who friended me today? My old roommate’s second cousin. Now I have 675 friends.”) You can’t say friend enough times.
I’m glad that the opposite of the word like is no longer dislike, but unlike. You no longer actively dislike something; you simply have stopped liking it. Much more positive.
And Toronto is a nicer city than Winnipeg.
