In my quest to be an aging curmudgeon I do my best to avoid the latest trends (blogging not withstanding) but one hip(?) new trend I've been sucked into is
Facebook. I hear it's the latest usurper to the social networking culture. From what I understand it is surpassing My Space.com in that arena. About all I know about My Space.com is that it helped launch a thousand crappy Emo bands and it's a hunting ground for perverts and pedophiles. Not necessarily my kind of place. I got drawn into the Facebook thing from my friend Jodii Wheler. I've mentioned her before. She's a pen pal I met online way back in the last century. Well anyway...I digress. I signed up and my account languished for months, a victim to my fear of the new and unfamiliar. Than I started getting emails from my 14 and 16 year old nieces. Already suffering from an overwhelming conviction that due to my absence during their growing up I was a crappy Uncle, I thought this would let me keep in touch in a way they would appreciate. And it would let my keep an eye on any of those perverts that made the jump from My Space. It was a flawless plan until I actually got on there and have to endure being notified that my fourteen year old niece just added the "Sexy Friends" application to her homepage. What sounds good in theory doesn't hold up under the harsh cold light of reality. Although it has been fun being able to write a quick little message to the girls on the "SUPER WALL!!!". As far as I can tell there are about three different walls, the regular old Wall, the Advanced Wall and the aforementioned Superwall. For all I know they are all the exact same wall.
One of my big beefs with the site is the encouragement to pass on spam. I got one that told of a girl with lung cancer who was also beat by her mother. The Make a Wish foundation would give seven cents toward her treatment every time the message was forwarded (I admire the seven cent thing, a good believable number). In closing the little girl thanked all of those people forwarding the email. For those cruel callus bastards unwilling to hit the forward button she offered this ominous warning "What goes around, comes around!" It was almost like a bad Japanese horror movie. Would she reach out from the grave and smite us. That's right, I said us. No one threatens me and gets away with it. No seven cents from Big B!
As unimaginably horrifying as it is to see that my niece is taking the "places to make out" quiz, it is reassuring to know what is going on in her life. I know from talking to the two of them, that they have a good head on their shoulders and I think they trust me and talk to me about some of this stuff. Not all of it though. Everyone should have their secrets, besides, my heart couldn't take too much information.
