Tuesday, June 20, 2017

"The only thing you can depend on is yourself," he said to me after I had vented about how squeamish and flaky people are, threatening to sever all ties as we move physically and non-physically into phase two of our lives, and delete my Facebook account so that people who don't actually give a care about who I am can't spy on me and feel as though they've done something good that day, and neither can I to them.

So this thing happened where I tried to arrange a reunion among my college schoolmates, many of whom I hadn't seen or communicated with for ten years. I started by communicating with some of the people I had been close to during my time there, asking if they thought it was a good idea. They did. So I started a Facebook group page and added a bunch of people, and got interest there, too. So I did thing like put polls on to figure out the date and location of the event. People voted, things were decided. June came along, very close to the date, and the last-minute details needed to be arranged, but no one was willing to spend their time for input, so the venue wound up being a little less desirable (it was joined to a larger event for convenience, and because it was free, but we had hopes of getting a private room to ourselves, which didn't happen.)

As you can guess, very few showed. I left feeling happy to have caught up with the four that showed, but feeling sorry for making those that did come take time out of their day for such a disappointing event, and resentful at those who had taken the time to give interest and vote on time and location and then not bother to show or let others know they were not coming.

It spurred me to take things to the next level in a thought-process that has long been running, and delete my Facebook account. Not a huge, life-altering moment, I agree; I simply decided that the Facebook style of feeling like you're all caught up in everybody's lives by scrolling down a screen, intermittent with ads and useless who likes what business or game information, privy to private information in people's lives of which I have no relationship whatsoever, no matter how well I used to know them -- including family, by the way-- was not for me.

I mean, I'm easily a 2/10 when it comes to "social capability and prowess." I do not thrive. I have always had very few close friends (ie. 1-2), and any attempt, such as this blasted reunion, I have made at re-connecting or establishing any kind of connection with any kind of group in the past 2-4 years, has not been met with reciprocation or really much of anything. People are too busy. People live in places where they are surrounded by their families, where they feel supported by their church, where they are busy during the work-time hours and want to veg it out in their spare time with their immediate family. But most critically, people live in a social media world where they don't feel the need to catch up in the physical world, and who are content to flake out on whomever they like whenever they like because the relationship isn't there; their relationship is with Facebook, not people. I'm not saying I don't get it; I'm a flake, sure. I get nervous talking on the phone. I avoid rather than confront. But I'm moving on, or at least that's the general idea of what I intend to do by deleting my account. I mean, I'm barely in contact two out of three of my siblings. I'm sure part of it is age, this stage of life, our generation, maybe, but it's unforgivable to me, to live in such a world where I receive updates on the whereabouts and wellbeing of my family on a public site. And it's on me, by allowing personal relationships to be replaced by a screen.

So that's it. I'm done. Bye, bye, Facebook. Thank you for allowing me to communicate with my now-spouse when we were too shy to talk in person and I didn't own a cellphone or understand how T9 worked. You are handy for arranging group meets even when nobody shows, and for people trying to sell items, neither of which I'm particularly interested in. C'est la vie.

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