I've been invited to join Facebook several (30?...40?) times over the last couple of years. The invites have mostly seemed rather random. Mostly from folks I only vaguely know. People who went to my high school, but not necessarily at the same time I did. People whose web pages I've followed. But, nobody I would really consider to be a close friend. Of course, none of my closest "real world" friends are on Facebook. I can barely get them to answer email messages. And, do they even know or care that I have a web page? Just barely. But, mostly? Nope. They don't.
Some background. I bought the joanna.org domain and set up my page in August of 1997. After a few months, I noticed that people were doing searches for the name of my high school and were finding my page. But, none of them would ever write. I decided that they were looking for fellow alumni. But, I was very likely not the person they were looking for. I only went to school there for a couple of years. And, Nido is a PreK through 12th grade kind of place that's been open for 75 years. Back in the dark ages of 1997, there was no Facebook or Classmates.com. So, I threw the Nido Alumni Roundup page up...offering to list alumni, regardless of when they actually attended the school. And, people started signing up. It took about 6 months before someone found it that I actually knew and went to school with. But, cool. Looking back now, it's hard to believe that thing has been online for nearly 12 years. Anyway. I'd update the page periodically. But, as time went on, it became more and more cumbersome to maintain. About 3 years ago, I basically gave up on the project. I even set my email program up to shuffle any emaill message that contained the word "Nido" into a folder that I'd barely glance at. 'Twas sad. That's the long-term back-story.
Now for some short-term back-story. Three or four weeks ago, I got an email message from my high school biology teacher. I didn't notice it, though, 'cause it went into that Nido-purgatory folder I mentioned above. But, for some reason, I looked into that folder a little over a week ago. The "From" address on the message in question didn't mean anything (it did not have his name associated with it) but the subject line was a little different so I opened it. And, lo...email from an old teacher. I had to pay attention. 'Turns out he'd been prompted to write by someone working on a big 75th anniversary party for the school. Said someone had written to me a couple of times (and, sadly, been ignored) so he'd written to Mr. Atala, asking him to send me a message and see if I'd respond. Oops. So, I paid attention. And, I went through the 3 years (!) worth of messages in that folder and updated everything I could update on the page. There were about 150 messages. Most of them just had updated email addresses. But, some of them had news. And, a couple of them were from people I actually knew. Tsk tsk. Anyway, one of them mentioned a Facebook group for the high school. I'd looked at Facebook pages before and, basically, would see a couple of pictures of a person with an invite to join. Facebook pages don't look very interesting to outsiders, quite frankly. Why would I bother? But, the high school group was more open. And, I could see actual posts from people on the discussion board. And, I recognized a name or two. And, then there was a post about my graduating class. And, a list of a group of people I used to hang out with. But, my name was not on the list! Horrors! So, I had to join. And, ask why I was left off the list. I did that a couple of days ago. (Sadly, the oversight has yet to be explained. Heh.) After posting the question, I went about my business...and basically ignored the thing for a couple of days. Well, not ignore so much as not know what to do next.
An odd thing did strike me right away when I signed up. It immediately suggested that I might want to be Friends with Warren Hood. That struck me as bizarrely random. I really like Warren's music but why would Facebook pick him...out of all the thousands of Facebook people who live in Austin...to be my Friend? I ignored the suggestion. I had no idea what being Facebook Friends really meant and Warren and I (much as I enjoy his flair with a fiddle) are not friends. After I added info about my high school and graduation date, it started suggesting that I might want to be Friends with some of those people. But, Warren stayed at the front of the list. Again, I didn't try to "Friend" anyone since I had no clue what that really meant. Last night, though, I got an invitation to be Friends with Kenny and then with Joyce...and a couple of other people from my high school. And, I said yes! Kenny was my best friend's little brother. I love Kenny! And, Joyce? She graduated the year before me and came to UT. And, we used to run into each other at UT from time to time. Can you imagine? We went to a high school that had 50-60 people in each grade level and would run into each other on a college campus that had more than 50,000 people wandering around it. I'd been wondering where she was. Cool. And, then more invites came. But, then Warren disappeared from the list of suggested friends. Huh? Apparently Facebook has figured out that Warren and I aren't destined to be friends. So sad. (And, so quick...just a couple of days later.) Did I mention how handy he is with a fiddle? And, he's got a sweet voice. I'm gonna miss that. Or, maybe I'll get off my duff and go watch him play sometime soon. Yeah, that's probably the thing to do. He's gonna be at Momo's on Sunday night. Who wants to go with me? Ah well.
Facebook kinda creeped me this morning, though. I got a "Friend" invitation from my friend Liz. Um...Facebook, how did you know to tell Liz that I had joined up? We didn't go to school together. Not high school. Not college. I was delighted, of course, to be befriended by Liz. But, still. Creepy. And, then Liz went off and told other people that I was now on Facebook so more of those weirdos started popping out of the woodwork. That's still cool, right? Maybe.
And, then I went to work. And, left it all behind for a few hours. It's lunchtime now and I just spent 20 minutes writing this up. 'Guess I'll go see what fun has transpired since I got to the office.
Posted on by