My husband was talking to his sister the other day and discussing how immature some people can be. He told her that these people are still living in Junior High school and she needed to be a teacher instead of one of the students.
I thought it was a great analysis. We are adults now, we have to stay out of the childish arguing and stuff like that and rise above it–because we are better than that.
Anyway, that isn’t exactly what this post is about. This post is about facebook.
For a long time my 2 children and husband told me I needed to be on facebook. It was fun and you could talk to people you had lost touch with. I resisted. But I finally gave in and signed up for an account. I had fun looking for people I knew and looking at their photos and catching up. For awhile, I was on a LOT. But the novelty wore off and I check it once a day now. (Ok, maybe a couple times, but nowhere near as much as I did when I was first on.)
My problem is that facebook can be a good way to keep in touch with people, but it can also be a route to reliving the worst of your Junior High Years.
I thought it would be interesting to find out what people are doing and say hello. Whenever someone added me as a friend, I would go to their page and say hello and how nice it was to see them. (Even if it wasn’t, I’m not going to be a jerk about it.) My friends were added slowly and I only added people if I wanted to be their friend, not just to have a huge list of people I knew. So I write on people’s pages and on certain pages, I get NOTHING. Not a hello. Not a “how ya doin’?” Not even, “I’m busy now, so I’ll have to get with you later.” And I’m thinking, well, I’ll give it a couple of weeks, since not everyone is on here every day like I am.
Weeks go by. Nothing. I’m seriously feeling rejected–but not too bad–just a little. I hear nothing. There are some people who have NEVER said anything to me. And on my page it says, “Julianne and Snotty Susie are now friends”. It sits and mocks me.
I don’t get it. Am I not cool enough? Is my profile picture ugly? Are my status updates boring or worse, too religious? So after I think about this it just makes me mad. I have one “friend” that added me–(I didn’t add them.) who I said hello to and asked what was going on with them. I hear nothing, but see that this “friend” has written to a couple of my other “friends” and hasn’t said anything to me. And its not like I’m sitting by the computer waiting for my friend to talk to me. Weeks have gone by and I’ve given them plenty of time to respond and they don’t. This is someone I haven’t seen in years who I considered to be a friend. And it is more than just one person. There are probably 20 people who haven’t said a word to me.
I’m really not bitter. Just kind of irritated and the phrase “living in junior high school” came to mind. Do I really want to waste my time with people that won’t talk to me on facebook? I decided that no, I don’t want to waste any time or energy. So now, I have a couple of people on facebook I truly have reconnected with and had a great time emailing back and forth and I have some friends that comment occasionally, but are still in my life.
Then I have those stupid people I used to know that apparently just want a higher number of “friends”. I just ignore them. It isn’t exactly that it bothers me, it more irritates me that people haven’t grown up in the 10-20 years that I haven’t seen them. I feel like face book can sometimes be a big class in Junior High.
But I have moved beyond them. I have better things to do than worry about someone “talking” to me over facebook. And as I say that, inside, I am sticking my tongue out at all of them.
Maybe I have to move beyond elementary school…