Wednesday, December 16, 2009

#203: Damn Facebook

I am 99% sure that I am somewhat addicted to Facebook. I enjoy going through and finding people I used to go to school with and I don't have to pay a $30 monthly fee to do it. I currently have 53 friends and all of them, but one, I know either from school or work. A couple I have even dated but that actually falls into the category of work. What gets me is when people drop me from their friends list. When I learn that happened, I want to know why. One of the girls I dated back in high school dropped me suddenly (just like back in high school) so I tried adding her back and she ignored my request. So I shrugged my shoulders and moved on.

Another "defriending" was very weird. It was about 8:30 in the morning and one of my friends started chatting with me. Normally, this is no big deal but this was a friend with whom I had no interaction. We worked together at one time but that was it. Anyway, after our cordial greetings, he directs me to the reason he is talking to me. He and his family are in London, stranded because they were mugged. Now, if true, this somewhat horrible but something stuck out that made me believe this was fake. First, he said that he was at a resort in London. You don't go to London for the resorts. Does London even have resorts? Second, my friend was recently laid off. I know some vacations are planned months in advance but still, it seemed shady. Third, I'm not, never have been, never will be a close enough friend to him for him to ask me for money.

That's right, he wanted money. And, seriously, I couldn't afford to send a dime anyway if I wanted to. I told him this, made a suggestion about finding the American Embassy then got his email off of Facebook and sent him an email suggesting that his account may have been hacked but offered my apologies if he was in that situation. And do you know what happened? I never heard back and his account was deleted. I've checked back to see if he's come back but I can't find him if he has. I wouldn't friend him again if he returned anyway.

I had to hide one of my friends a couple months or so ago. I had grown tired of his anti-Obama status updates and decided to do away with actually reading and seeing them. Fun fact: this guy currently lives in Utah but was born in Iowa--the two most boring states ever! Throw Nebraska in there and he'll have the boring state trifecta! I plan on bringing his updates back after the new year. The update that pissed me off the most was during the election when he posted that it was a "dark day for the city of Provo" because the person he didn't like won the mayoral election. Yes, how dare the majority of people vote for who they like. The bastards!

I have a friend who updates her status every five minutes to tell us what she's doing at work and I find that less annoying than political opinion updates. And I'm sure everyone agrees with me because (prepare for shameless plug), none of your 256 friends care about your political opinions.

Until next time, I remain...
~Brian