Facebook v Friendship. Round 1.
A funny thing happened to me the other day. I sent a parcel - as you do - to a friend that has recently given birth to a bouncing baby boy. This you may think is nothing out of the ordinary however when I didn’t hear back for a fortnight to confirm said receipt of gift (and following a lot of cussing about the Royal Mail whom I had unfairly accused of losing it) I was at a bit of a loss about whether she had received it.
Not wanting to be a pest I thought it best to maybe sent a friendly post to her via Facebook just to ask how things were and when would be a good time for me to pop down (I say pop, she lives a four hour drive away) and see the family en masse. Imagine my horror then when I logged on to see a note from her husband chastising me for not commenting on the photographs of their – very beautiful – tot that he had uploaded over a week before.
Now I hold my hands up and say that I am not the world’s best Facebooker. If I’m perfectly honest I don’t care what dress some girl I didn’t particularly like at school chose to marry her childhood sweetheart in, but I do use it as a means of keeping in touch with close friends who may be travelling or living away on a fairly regular basis.
However what I took exception to in this case was the fact that I had seemingly tipped a friend’s husband (not even the friend herself!) over the edge by not responding to a posting on my wall that I didn’t even know was there. Even if I had known it was there I would have rather called her to say that the aforementioned babe was beautiful as opposed to telling 100 other people I don’t know it is. It got me thinking are ‘walls’ really a measure of friendship these days?
To be honest I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that Facebook isn’t really about maintaining genuine friendships, but rather about ‘friendship life’ – a meta friendship as it were that only exists within the confines of a social networking page.
Too lazy to ring your mate? Why not throw a sheep at them instead? Can’t be bothered to send a birthday card? Don’t worry - you can just type a quick “happy birthday” posting to them. Worried that you haven’t got anything in common with your old school friends? Invite them to do a “What Sex and the City character are you?” quiz to fill the awkward silence.
Research is showing that more and more people (especially between the ages of 18-24) are deactivating their Facebook profiles in favour of other forms of new media. Twitter it seems is one of the ones highest up the tally chart as it doesn’t require a legion of followers unlike FB where if you don’t have 500 friends you are made to feel a social outcast.
I would like to think that in the same way people - like me - are starting to re-evaluate the reasons as to why they visit Facebook and maybe see that instead of being used as a convenient excuse for not speaking to someone directly it can actually be used as means of complementing and even strengthening existing friendships.
As for my friend’s husband, well I think I have managed to calm the ridiculous storm somewhat and we have even agreed a date for me to go down to visit...I think we have come to the conclusion that no matter how great his photos are sometimes there can be no substitute for seeing someone in person.