People from my class in high school. People I met once. People I swore I'd never lose touch with but then did by the time the next summer rolled around. Facebook tells me tritely that these people are my "friends" but in reality, they never have been. I interact with (optimistically) 1/6 of the people I call my "friends".
Before facebook, life had a natural ebb and flow. There's all sorts of corny quotations...like this one:
“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.”
Facebook makes it so we rarely have to deal with someone walking out of our lives. We can forever keep tabs on them, see what they're up to, creep on their pictures, see if they're in a relationship. I maintain an illusion of closeness with that one girl in high school I used to BFFFFFFFFs with because I know all about her life. I just don't actually talk with her about it.
Facebook is going to kill the Christmas letter. Christmas letters are how my parents' generation (and those before) kept in touch with all of the people they felt obligated to keep in touch with and fill in on the details of what happened in the previous year. Now, if they're on facebook (and chances are they are), all that lazy bum has to do is look at your profile and coast through your pictures to see what's been going on in your life. It saves on both effort and postage.
It gives me pause, though. Right now, I'm carrying 647 people around with me. A good portion of them represent periods in my life I don't really want to go back to. A good portion of them I will never talk to again. Facebook has saddled me with them because I feel I should carry them with me. I have saddled myself with them because facebook makes them accessible.
Facebook has made it so much harder to leave the past in the past.
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