Facing Facebook

I'm on Facebook. A lot. And like so many other things in my life, it's not my fault.

Let me start by saying I don't really understand Facebook. I understand Twitter, even though I'm not on Twitter. Twitter makes a certain kind of sense to me. But Facebook seems a bizarre blending of a high school yearbook, Silly Putty and The Blob (the one with Steven McQueen in it). Now, I like my high school yearbook and I like Silly Putty (actually I love Silly Putty) and I like The Blob, but I've never sought out all three together. One at a time suffices.

If you scroll down the right side of my blog, really really scroll, you'll see that Harcourt set up Facebook pages for both me and Life As We Knew It. It was very nice of them and I'm quite appreciative. And if that was where my Facebook existence began and ended, I'd be more than happy. I'm always happy when people do things for me. In fact, if somebody brought me some Silly Putty, I'd be very happy indeed.

But on occasion, I do things for other people, and that's where this Facebook situation took a turn for the worse. I belong to a very nice very tiny very local good deeds organization, which was founded in the early 20th century and hasn't made much progress since then. So I offered to set up a Facebook page for them.

Well it turns out the only way you can find out anything about Facebook is to be registered with Facebook. Maybe I was already, since my name was, but I think (or at least I thought at the time) that I had to set up my own personal Facebook account, which means, like it or not, I had to set up my own personal Facebook page. So I did, for the sole purpose of being able to create a Facebook account for The Children's Enrichment Committee of Orange County New York. It's not the world's fanciest Facebook page, but I still maintain it's better than nothing.

When I set up my own Facebook account, I couldn't even do it under Susan Beth Pfeffer, since Susan Beth Pfeffer already had a Facebook page thanks to Harcourt. I went with Susan Pfeffer, and I don't know, maybe I told someone or maybe people figured it out on their own, or maybe people are trying to "friend" me over at the Harcourt page or maybe I was inheriting friends of other Susan Pfeffers.

All I know is every now and again I get an email telling me someone I don't know wants to be my friend. And when I go to the Susan Pfeffer page (which I never do) there are all kinds of comments and pictures, which I've had nothing to do with. They just show up.

My resistance to this could well be generational. The other day, while trying to figure out what possible benefit Facebook could offer me, I Facebooked in my high school graduating class, and found it has a page with a grand total of 4 members. This suggests to me that approximately 400 of my high school graduating class have no interest in being on Facebook and I don't blame them.

So here's the deal. You want to "friend" me, fine. Friend away. I promise I'll accept anyone who offers me Facebook friendship. It will be a totally one sided relationship, but from now on I'll press that "accept" button with only minimal hesitation.

And while you're busy on Facebook, I'll be playing with Silly Putty!