<kate> is watching you
<shutter sister> is contemplating the meaning of life and the size of her ass.
<ex-sex-toy-selling blogger> ’s kids are napping. bills paid. laundry being laundered. I may actually be having a productive day! WOOT!
<ex-...'friend'> is printing jerseys for Whistler-Blackcomb mountain bike parks.
<favourite ski bunny> had a good doctor's appt this morning...baby's doing great!
<the most likeable woman in Vancouver tech> urgently requires an iced latte.
<the most likeable man in Vancouver tech> is in Tunisia.
<random guy from high school> is hittin the shwarma shop.
<distantly known blogger> wants to use the word 'poseur' in a sentence.
<poppy’s mummy> is looking for the teapot.
<neighbourhooder> is pissed… how much more can i take… why cant people mind their own business… why do i even bother…
<British blogger> says BUMBLEBEANS!!!!!!!
<wife of the brother of a sister-in-law’s husband> is speaking franglais.
<mad> knows the difference between desire and fulfillment.
+++++
She lives in London now, The Big London, and is no longer eight years old or ten years old or twelve.
She is my mother’s friend’s daughter, all fresh-faced, skinny jeans and converse. Her profile is a peek into her big-city, post-university, career-growing life.
I was fifteen and she wasn’t even born yet.
She goes to bars, shows. Someone’s Marshall amp sits in the corner of her flat. There’s also mismatched, foppish couches, a tangle of computers and laptops, half-eaten pizzas, clothes scattered happily. Drinks, boyfriends, fringed flapper dresses for prohibition-era theme parties, hijinx at tube stops.
She’s at the beginning of everything, fresh and sparkling and unhindered. She’s just about the best kid I’ve ever known, her and her brother. Both of them lithe and willowy and fun-loving but sensible, rooted deep.
Had it not been for this keyhole I may have not thought of her this month or for longer. Nostalgia washed down with two glasses of cheap wine and a handful of half-regurgitated banana-flavoured teething biscuits, sitting in our screened-in porch smiling as the sun sets over a lawnful of indian paintbrushes.
+++++
I'm not cool enough to be too cool for Facebook.
Every few days I peer through the keyholes of flings and friends alike. Catching up does not require engagement. Engagement does not require bumping into you at the grocery store with dreadlocks growing at the back of my neck, crusties in my tear ducts and the pot-to-the-head chitchat of Liam.
Facebook is social reconnaissance entirely on my terms, and on your terms. Given how deeply countrified we are—and how often I'm in a state of near-dreadlock—I'm content to be the dork who checks in on NICU podmates and 1989 prom dates and everything in between and giggles at the magic of it all.
What do you think?
Is social networking the 42nd sign of the coming of the apocalypse? Fun for the first week? A festering pit of stupid pet trick videos? A source of real-life connection? Harmless diversion for insommniacs? A cross-section of the human condition? High school redux?
What's your guilty pleasure? What corner of the Internet are you embarrassed to adore? Fess up. I need to make Justin think I'm normal.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Reader Comments (52)
I have to see and know that maybe my secret story is just as shocking or scary or risky as someone else's...
That- and-
mydeathspace.com
Trying to comfort families of those scared, angry, sad teenagers that couldn't seem to face life for another day.
I'm starting to like Twitter b/c it is status updates on crack. The only problem is there aren't enough people that I know there.
BTW, thanks for using my almost meaningful update as opposed to my "two rolls of toilet paper in the laundry" update.
Alternatively, here's an article about the "dark" side of that - the less connected we are all becoming, and the effects of that lack of contact with regular human beings. http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html
Enjoy!
Okay, maybe a little. This is gonna be difficult to type. Okay...perez hilton. There. I said it.
Oh, and classmates.com, but only in spurts. And I google everyone else I can't find the.
The first step is admitting it.
And the Fug girls. And Ask Moxie (although, I think she's more of a help than anything else). And for some strange reason the baby name wizard blog. And a few earth mother/craft goddess blogs that make me feel like a complete failure as a mother and a human being. But other than that Sweet Juniper, you, and some friends.
I like keeping in touch with people, although I find it ironic that my bestest oldest friend refuses to be on facebook, so she's the one person I HAVE to call. :P
I have no guilty pleasures, aside from porn. :P
I subscribe to a lot of blog feeds, but mostly design and illustration through which I can quickly scan.
The most embarrassing site I visit is the local rain radar, to see if we should go for a walk now or later!
I'm not sure I'd call humor/snark sites that deal with sports, politics and tv guilty pleasures, but if you do, color me shamefaced.
I discovered a good friend I've known since elementary school lives down the road here in Seattle, and we grew up in Missouri. We hadn't talked in 13 or 14 years and, all of a sudden, "Hey, I've lived here for nine years and you've been here for five and neither of us knew?!"
Otherwise, there are a few folks I've "befriended" on facebook, who I have a love/hate relationship with and it's interesting keeping in touch with them. And then there is the girl whom I actually decided to not be friends with anymore because I discovered she was a backstabbing type. There's something powerful with the whole medium...though so not because it's just so anonymous. I think I'm just as conflicted...
My only other really guilty pleasure is the online tabloids, which I am desperately trying to ignore these days.
Three remarkable things have happened in my life as a direct result of FB:
I reconnected with two of my best friends from high school with whom I'd lost touch; they both came to my recent wedding!
Also, I was "friended" by a girl who I thought I hated in my 20s; she was the sexy vixen who my boyfriend at the time drooled over. Now, we've made our peace and have really enjoyed getting to know one another via FB.
My daily checks/haunts are here, Snickollet's blog, Tomato Nation, Go Fug Yourself, the BabyName Wizard blog... the naming one really being my guiltiest not-so-secret pleasure.
Social networking is fine. Social networking is great. It's interesting, though kind of awkward, to be sought out by a childhood friend who we haven't seen in twenty years. It's exciting to reconnect with someone we've been yearning to talk with, whose phone number or email was lost.
But I won't Twitter, and I won't Facebook or Tribe or Friendster because the profiles only fizzle and stagnate. MySpace makes my brain ache because of the color and design sense of the average human being. Only LiveJournal has stayed, and that's dubious. Luddism?
I will always come and read your posts, however I feel about any other destination on the Net. Keep writing them, please. It feels like the best kind of [anonymous] social networking.
But in regards to your query, yes- I do think Facebook represents a watershed, somewhat apocalyptic, aspect of web-based social networking. I've had friends from the past (boyfriends, high school friends, etc.) crawl out of the woodwork and "friend" me. Even if we have just sort of lost touch, its weird to now have open access to their lives in the form of their e-profiles. Sometimes I wonder if we (as social creatures) are meant to "know" that many people- if collecting these older friendships as electronic-pseudopals wont somehow degrade the meaningful "in the now" relationships we continue to form. Kind of like we are bucking against the natural progression of relationships. Postmodern time/space compression, etc. etc.
But still, it IS all sorts of fun, isn't it?
I am totally addicted to my igoogle page with Google Gadgets and Google Reader. It's like drive-thru service for the internet. Perfecto!
I will admit that it is a nice tool for casual comments back and forth with friends in Australia and the States. And also spying (with growing horror) on my out-of-town little sister's Girls-Almost-Gone-Wild social life. Apparently she is spending the bulk of her income on booze... and really short skirts.
As for internet frequent haunts, love Sartorialist (someone mentioned it above) but I don't feel guilty about that one. However, I am quite embarrassed that not only do I watch shows like So You Think You Can Dance (Canada!) and Survivor, but I will then go onto TelevisionWithoutPity and read the show forums to partake in some post-viewing snark. Oh, the scathing comments after Emanuel Sandhu auditioned in Vancouver!! :)
Also I like to see which people who were mean to me in junior high still can't spell, and have gotten fat. I am not really a nice person - I just play one online. ;)
oh and also, I read about random people's private lives on their blogs. my other guilty pleasure. although you write so well that it's hard to feel guilty... I tend to file it under the Victorian category of activities that are "improving". :)
*Disclaimer: Janet would never blackmail a teenager. But I do like to post dorky comments on her wall to embarrass her. It's her own fault: she invited a family member who is more than twice her age to be her friend.
I am forever searching for online ways to connect with my cousins who don't do email/letters and don't do phone calls (since they can't hear -- not that they have bad attitudes). I first started using an instant messenger and MyFamily.com and Facebook all to keep in touch with them.
I love Twitter, though I feel guilty when I don't follow people that are following me. My true guilty pleasure now is Spider Solitaire, but that's not online.