Jan. 26: Facebook anxiety

I signed up at Facebook about a year ago, and started being active on the site last spring. Almost immediately I re-connected with Sherilee, one of my first friends at college and one I’d lost touch with after graduation. If she was the only friend I’d found on Facebook, it’d still be totally worth it. But I was lucky; I continue to find dear, long-lost friends every few weeks. I think Facebook is a kick in the pants, in the very best way. Most people I know start out like I did, just doing a little bit here and there… and then you start finding people, and being found, and it turns into something addictive and oh-so-much-fun. I love keeping in touch with friends in an almost effortless way.

(But it’s not so much fun that you need to join, Mom. I don’t want to mislead you into thinking it’s something you would enjoy. Heh heh heh…)

One of the most interesting Facebook features is that users can write “status updates” to say what they’re doing at any given time. People also use these to share links, ask advice, offer opinions, and that sort of thing. Status updates and the comments that follow appear on a person’s wall, which is visible to anyone that has permission to view their profile. However, once there are more than three comments on a post, they are collapsed so just the first and last show and viewers have to click if they want to read the ones in between.

Last weekend I had my first negative experience on Facebook. A silly friend and I both commented on a mutual friend’s status Friday night. Our first couple of comments related to the text in his status, but then one of us wondered how long we could continue our comments until he would intercept (he was online but inactive). In the mean time, we were writing a bunch of goofy comments, and because the three of us had conversed on my wall the same way a while back—where we got up to something like 46 comments!—we figured once he jumped in that we’d all have good chuckles.

He did jump in, but he didn’t add to our comments. Instead, he started deleting ours. He didn’t delete them all, though; he removed most of them and the ones he left made us look like we had had a conversation that we did not. We were both shocked that not only was he not amused by what we had done, it appeared he was embarrassed or offended by it. The guy has a great sense of humor and this just did not seem like him at all.

She and I were privately chatting at this point, and both of us felt terrible about his reaction, but also like we’d been punished, which made us feel embarrassed and kinda mad. It’s not like we hijacked his wall or anything; all our stupidity was collapsed into a link. It felt as though he was censoring us. We both went back to his wall and deleted the rest of our comments. We also both apologized to him, separately, in private chat, which he pretty much ignored. Later that evening he left a note on her wall that basically said, “I forgive you, but not Jen.” Huh? I can’t even begin to guess why that is. We were equally silly/stupid/annoying.

What bothered me about this most, I guess, is that I’ve been lucky to have almost all very positive and fun Facebook interactions. I’ve never felt the need to delete anything anyone has put on my wall. I suppose I’d do it if I thought something was inappropriate. I enjoy humor, though, so it’d have to be really, really, really inappropriate. Really. But this whole experience left me feeling icky. A little bitter. Sorta hurt, too. It just sucked. I’m not exactly angry anymore, but I feel like I need to walk on eggshells around this guy on Facebook now, that’s for sure.

Well, Sherilee, not to worry; you are still my #1 Awesome Facebook Friend-Find™ (I know that’s the only reason you read this far).