Sucked into Facebook

Just as everyone eventually gets a blog, I suppose everyone eventually succumbs to Facebook. Curiosity will get the best of you, you will create an account, you will look up everyone you ever knew, you will stalk an ex, you will suddenly befriend someone you wouldn't have spoken to 20 years ago, you will compulsively update your status, you will experience a period of Friend inactivity, as I have done, and then you will think... it is too late to abandon Facebook without insulting everyone you have friend-ed?

" [Facebook] is my church." - Dr. A

It is unfair of me to quote her without context. It was early Sunday morning and I had encountered her on-line. On Facebook, of course. She was making a point.

I have now said Facebook more times than Super Sugar Crisp. Any true insider knows one says FB.

Let me also comment here that you can put eyeglasses on any cartoon and she will look like me.

None of which FB will encourage you to use -- lots of blah-blah about copyrights. I don't need to be sued by DC Comics and Lynda Carter. FB, I think, is what Prodigy hoped to be when it launched in the primordial ooze of on-line community (so pretty).

When I first explored Myspace, my reaction was, "Ew. Just because you CAN use 15 colors and 25 animated fonts doesn't mean you SHOULD..." It was all teen txtspk and the only people I knew who used it were Moms spying on their kids. We in Massachusetts heard about FB early on, as it was born at Harvard, but it was still "Myspace for college students" at that time, and I was still using a VCR.

Is Our Lady of FB better or worse than....

Email?

About neutral for convenience sake, but more entertaining. As any FB-er will tell you, mail is something they have to go GET (aaagh...huff puff) and wall messages and updates are just... there.

So... sort of the same if you are the person sending email, but a little better if you are receiving it.

Evite?

Yahoo seems to give you a lot of design creativity in making invitations. FB seems behind on this aspect. It's so Use-nety. Like leaving a note on the fridge, while Evite is scrapbooking.

Linked in?

Linked In can't hold a candle to the personal aspect of FB, but it doesn't have to. Linked In should stay a little buttoned up to serve its purpose of networking you to your next job opportunity. Your interviewer doesn't want a sheep thrown at him.
I have admitted to being quite slutty on Linked In -- I will offer to Link to total strangers, simply because I think their network could build my network, and get me a few degrees closer to someone hiring at NPR. On FB I discovered I play it coy. If you cross the room to talk to me, I'll be glad to have punch on the patio, but no thank you, I still don't dance.

Myspace?

uccch. I'll tell you what a Friend (capitalized, as in, an FB friend) told me: "It's all kids and porn," he said without any irony. And FB doesn't provide you with the tools to make red text on a black background with a marching paisley border. I admire them for that level of client discipline.

Book club?

I really wouldn't know.

So what's the compulsion everyone talks about?

Remember when you first got your answering machine...voice mail...email...Treo...personal ad... and you couldn't stand the idea of not knowing for 5 minutes whether anyone has appreciated your brilliant outgoing message...menu options...domain name...thumb-typing skills...sparkling personality? It's that. That's all.