Thursday, January 13, 2011

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!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would not join any club that would have me as a member.

Glen (channeling Groucho)


Oh, wait, I already am a member.

Nevermind.

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hallo Glen-

You don't fool me one bit. I actually recognize your name when I stumble onto my Facebook page.

Then again, you don't go by Anonymous there!

Anonymous said...

wow glen how are you going to say your anonymous and then say your name in the middle i see that all these thing pop up but facebook is only another to make friends at home and find old friends so don't get mad at it and i love silly putty too.

Anonymous said...

The Groucho thing was just a joke, truly anonymous. I just clock in as anonymous as I often forget my passwords.

Glen

Lee said...

I was on facebook, but I hated it so I left.

Meanwhile, I hope you can find the email I sent you through all those FB notifications!

Wanda Vaughn said...

Ha! I just sent you a friend request. Just because.

And did you know that you can add silly putty as one of your interests on Facebook? Yep.

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hello to Glen, Lee, and Wanda Vaughn-

I regard myself as extremely fortunate to have all of you as friends!

Unknown said...

I'm always recommending Life as we knew it.

I did look you up on Facebook, but found her here instead. (Facebook works great for my magazine and has great games to distract me from the to-do list. :)

Keep up the excellent work. Please let us know if a movie is in the works.
And thanks to you, I never quite look at the moon the same way.
Best,
Susan Pennell-Sebekos
(facebook, Rein Magazine :)

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hello to Susan Pennell-Sebekos
of Rein Magazine-

I went over to Rein's Facebook page, and it's great. You know how to use Facebook, a skill I clearly don't have.

No movie in the works, I'm sad to say. But you never know what the future might hold.

And thank you for recommending Life As We Knew It. I'm perpetually grateful to the people who read it and tell others about it!

Misrule said...

Hey Susan, I am pretty good on Facebook, but there were too many Susan Pfeffers—I didn't know which one was you to send a friend request to!

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hello Misrule-

Why not friend all the Susan Pfeffers? As best I can tell, no one is particularly fussy at Facebook about who their friends are, and the other Susan Pfeffers are all considerably more interesting people than I am!