u2areloved

Photo Credit: http://www.kekeran.com/2012/05/signs-of-addiction-to-facebook.html

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.  ~Albert Einstein

      Ah, the joys of Facebook.  Who amongst us doesn’t two-time their day job by just a few hours or so in order to find out what your elementary school friends’  kids are up to, where they are currently vacationing or spending their retirement at forty,  as you allegedly work, or perhaps glean and pass on a few quotes, pictures, posters, videos, and blogs of wisdom.  Seriously, who doesn’t have time NOT TO know the comings and goings of the world wide wonderland?

Because once you know the status of your peeps, their peeps, and their peeps’ peeps, it brings you to the next most exciting part of Facebook:  The COMMENTS section.  You can always LIKE something and your “person” knows that you just internally nodded in agreement with them, as if to say “Right On”  You can write back a witty or humorous reply or my personal favorite; a politically or socially incorrect and controversial reply and then check back later and see if you are still “friends”.    You can write something stunningly profound only to be commented on by absolutely no one!  Or you can read a post, and silently ignore it and berate the fact that these people are your “friends.”  The part I like best about Facebook? Every day of the year, it is someone’s birthday, a chance to remember that this is the day God picked another amazing friend’s debut 16, 23, 45, 56, 67,  or 89 years ago.

One of the things that intrigues me the most about Facebook, besides the fact that there is a green man behind the curtain who is collecting and documenting your entire life for future sinister purposes (or so I’ve been told), is that sometimes when you try to comment or share on someone else’s wall, you are sometimes “face-slapped” with a message similar to these:

You don’t have sufficient permission to perform this action. (Since when did that stop me in real life?)

Your friend requires a permission certificate to perform this action.  (What?  How?  Where do I get that from?)

Facebook has encountered an error.  Please try again later.    (Darn it, is Zuckerman and the gang downing shots again instead of minding their servers?)

But my all-time favorite is this one:

Thanks for Your Help   Thanks for your feedback. You can Undo this action or Report it as abusive.

These messages always tick me off because I usually had something really important to say or share.  I know if I don’t do it right this minute, the opportunity will pass, and the outcome of my social media-inclined friends may be forever altered by what they didn’t get to know.

You can also post pictures of yourself as a baby, as you were in high school, after an incredible haircut or makeover, or after you dropped dozens of pounds, of which sadly I don’t think I’ll ever get the joy of posting.   Of course, we (but this is not limited to our friends’ photos of us) would never post our own ugly pictures, lest anyone get the truest impression of who we actually are.    You can post your vacations, your kids with their trophies, the biggest fish you didn’t catch, and any significant possessions you wish to make others envious of.  You can post pictures and links to causes near and dear to your heart.  You can post your life 24/7/365 in real time from the mundane to the incredulous.    You can start a page for your dog, your new baby, or the groups you are in.

And now the biggest blog in the atmosphere has gone public this week.  Before the first major media reporters finished their sentences about what a smoking hot IPO Facebook would be, there was already a wave of reports about how maybe it’s not actually worth one hundred gazillion dollars after all, since they don’t offer “product”, and there may possibly be a mass exodus if a floodgate of ads outnumber your friends’ status posts.   Investors around the world experienced the exhilaration of diving in, panic, and ultimately, were eventually subdued into accepting that it may be take more than the length of time it takes to post a comment to see if their financial decision would pay out.

The only thing I ever invested in Facebook was too much time I could have spent living my actual life somewhere else, basically doing things that were real.  Still, whether you have two or sixteen thousand and forty two  friends, alleged friends, or people you have no idea who they are on your Facebook, every now and then, in terms of sheer friendship and fact collecting, don’t you sometimes already feel like a zillionaire?

As I wrap this up, I am about to step foot bravely out in the real world without benefit of an undo or delete button as I say things and make decisions, hopefully without being reported as abusive.   Wish me luck!

Everything you can imagine is real.  ~Pablo Picasso