The Facebook Conundrum or Joe, you might not be able to hide from me anymore

I am a long standing member of the Anti-Facebook Society. I may as well be a founding father of the club. I know you've all heard my rants/reasons for this opposition so I won't go into it too much here. Basically, I feel that Facebook is a lazy shortcut to maintaining personal relationships. It's frustrated me to no end how my supposed best friends had important things going in their lives that they would announce on Facebook, but never personally to me. In this month's GQ, David Amsden writes that "our 'connected' culture is breeding a pandemic of isolation. That succinctly explains my larger, conceptual hatred for Facebook. I feel like, while we may be communicating more, we are simultaneously drawing back further and further into our own personal pods, with less and less reason to leave our couches or even pick up a phone. I am a big proponent of both. But, to quote the DeNiro character in Heat, there's a flipside to that coin (I think I have used this quote roughly 459 times on this blog in the past).

Two things happened. I was down visiting the fam a few weeks back and my aunt Lisa had her laptop logged in to Facebook. Most of my family have accounts. She was showing my grandma and my cousins photos of my wedding, my mom and uncle's drive to get there, and old family photos from when they were kids. For the first five minutes or so, I sat in a recliner, uninterested. Then I pulled the stick out of my ass and joined in. We scrolled through all kinds of photos, most of which my mom, aunt, or uncle had posted humorous comments on. Lisa and my grandma told stories as the old photos stirred up the old memories. It was a lot of fun.

The second thing was this morning. I was laying in bed and I was just thinking how disappointed I was in myself in terms of the kind of friend, son, nephew, etc. that I am. All I could think about was all the people that are so important to me that I had not called in so long. I realized while I so often think about these people and what they're going through in their lives, I don't go the distance to let them know it hardly as much as I should. And it was overwhelming to think of where to begin. I get up in the morning, I do my exercise, I go to work, I blog (gulp), I come home, take out the trash, cook dinner, do the dishes, maybe watch an hour or so of TV, maybe write, then I go to bed. This is the typical day and there is not a lot of wiggle room in there to be all that I wish I could be to everyone that I care about. I'm not Mother Teresa, of course. I do still require some time to work on my own stuff.

It was around this time that I began to reconsider my anti-Facebook feelings. Ideologically, I still felt I was right about the whole concept. But I was also faced with the guilt that I was out of touch with my friends and family and overwhelmed by the task of making it right, especially when so many of them live so far away. Which was more important to me, to be true to my ideology or to be current and more involved with my loved ones (Joe, you are a "loved one," fyi)? My mom was on Facebook and wanted to see photos of her son for crying out loud! Was it maybe time to get off my high horse a little and sacrifice some pride? It might just be.

After all, I can shape my experience to be exactly as I want it. I don't have to turn into a junkie; I do have the will power to use it and not become enslaved by it. Therefore, if I do decide to join, I vow to go by a certain code of Facebook conduct:

I vow to never update my lame-ass "status message," much less do it every five minutes with the most asinine reports imaginable.

I vow to not take drunken photos every time I go out with thought of how they will make me look on Facebook.

I vow to not devote 56 hours to creating a profile so detailed and nuanced that it could serve as my clone. If you know me, you know me. Don't come to my profile to learn about my deepest fears and favorite pizza toppings.

I vow to not stalk or be stalked by every person I had a class with in high school. Long lost friends, sure. Lab partners from sophomore year, no.

I vow to never take one of those childish, brain-squishing quizzes that ask me "Who was the last person you texted with?" or "do people say you're pretty?"

I vow to not make important, life-altering announcements on Facebook. The big stuff is still for phone calls and face-to-face.

Above all, I vow to not revert into being a teenager. I vow to not let Facebook lure me into thinking that my life is my own personal reality show or that people look to me for entertainment.

I'm not saying I'm ready. I still need to sleep on it. But I think we both know where this is heading. By the way, I am fully aware that the arguments stated above in favor of Facebook are arguments very similar to those made to me by some of you enthusiasts in the past.

To quote Fletch Lives, "It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong. I am not a big man."