More on Friendship

I'm well known as someone who's not really into trends in technology. I don't Twitter, I have a Blackberry with no data plan, and I don't need to have a movie at my fingertips. That said, I do have a Facebook account. Lately, as I've been thinking about friendships, relationships, and family, I have been thinking a lot about what technology has done to how we feel about ourselves and our peers.

I have friends on my Facebook that I have never met and probably will never meet. People who I have "met" through message boards and connected through common interests: Disney, cooking, married and childfree, etc. I also have friends who simply live far from me and Facebook helps me stay in touch.

But keeping with the spirit of my last blog post, I have been thinking a lot about relationships that could do with a little work. I'm really disturbed by how Facebook has taken the face and the person away. It's as if certain people who are important in my life have sadly become labeled my "Facebook" friend. We never talk, we never share pictures, we never call each other, we never go out and do anything. It's all contained in a nice little box on Facebook.

I made a comment to a friend recently that I would delete my account in a second if it weren't for Farmville. Bless my heart, I just got sucked in and it's one of my guilty pleasures while drinking my morning coffee. It makes me wonder if all my "Facebook relationships" would just fizzle out and die.

So why have a Facebook friendship? Is it easy? Convenient? Handy? Easier than picking up the phone? Easier than bringing over a photo album? Saves you from having to look another person in the eye? Is it a way to keep people from seeing you vulnerable? Is it pure laziness? I refuse to join the club of, "Oh, that's just how people communicate these days." It's heartbreaking to me the people that live so close to me who only communicate with me through Facebook. And you no what? I'm no better than the folks I'm complaining about. I just posted as my status a whine that no one reads my blog. How juvenile and self-serving is that? It falls under the category of things I would never say to a person's face but I will say it on the internet.

I hate labels. I truly do. But putting aside the family and friendships made simpler through Facebook due to distance, it really makes me question a lot of things. Are you my friend, or my Facebook friend? Just what part do I play in your life, and do you play in mine?