Facebook Feeding Frenzy

When I first joined Facebook at a shadchan's suggestion—the woman never set me up, by the way—it was a new, sparkling world. I eagerly friended any poor soul that had ever crossed my path. I posted pictures of family occasions that no one cared about. I tried to come up with witty, steady updates. (Now I occupy my time with trying to come with witty, steady blog posts.) 

But after a few years, the gleam began to fade. Perhaps it felt like too much work, but I think what eventually got to me was the inauthenticity: I don't really know any of these people. And the people that I do know never login anyway.

Why I am I spending so much time with all these strangers? 

I am not the only one to have FB Fatigue; Richard Morgan wrote about his experience in "Kicking the Facebook Habit." He was a master ninja at facebooking, then he deactivated his account. He realized how much of his recorded life was strictly for social media, and began to live it instead. 

I caught myself watching folks in parks and subways looking at Facebook, so many blue-lit zombie stares. I guess that works for them, I told myself with my jealous-ex snark. It reminded me of my sister, who once eschewed meat and began calling it “carcass.” I wanted to scream, “Soylent Green”-style, “Facebook is made of people! Peeeeeople!”

I do look back on my younger self with some embarrassment, for her oversharing and confusing friending with friendship. I have scraped away a good chunk of the extraneous material from my profile, such as "friends," all photos (except the shidduch friendly one, I did activate the damn thing for that reason, right?), removed TV shows "likes" since I won't do their advertising for them, and only post if I desperately need some information that the remaining few could possibly help me with. 

But then, ah, but then, there are all those luscious FB groups and pages where 1 out of 10 memes are mildly entertaining . . . well, maybe I'm not done with it completely, yet. Ideally, I would "like" to be.