Yeah, that’s right.  I said it.  And I stole it off a bumper sticker describing our last president.

I won’t deny that I have used Facebook for varying purposes both professional and personal.  I have used it to stalk our notoriously blasé alumnae, whose career trajectories we are supposed to track (and they know this) but who are really, really, really bad about keeping us informed of their whereabouts the moment they leave town.  I have used it to look up people I used to know in a former life; not in the Shirley MacLaine definition thereof, but people I knew from my days as an underpaid, overworked cog at a non-profit in DC, people I knew from my days as an undergraduate, and people I knew from (shudder) high school.

I have stopped friending people from high school.  At this point, I’m “friends” with people that I knew well.  My “people you may know” box lists a number of people that I didn’t know well and, you know what?  If they want to get in touch, they can friend me. As the number of people that I have known in my life is actually something of a finite number (I was a bit of a wallflower until grad school), it’s that little box right there that’s been the source of some amusement and derision of late.

Maybe it’s just that I’m bitter that I don’t actually know most of the people that the little box suggests.  The chain of linkages seems to have worn thin–Facebook has, on occasion, suggested people to be friends of mine for no other obvious reason than they happen to have the same name as people that I already know.  That’s weird, right?

I am not in favor of the introduction of things that I can “Fan” into my “people you may know” box.  There are too many things to “fan” these days.  “Flipping the pillow over to get to the cool side”?  Really? The day that I completely lost my patience was … well, I found it creepy that a little box appeared suggesting that I become a fan of “butt sex” right next to another little box suggesting that I friend my high school guidance counselor.

Seriously.  Ew.

Then, of course, there are the recent spate of groups that have popped up that are Iran related.  I can support “free and fair elections in Iran,” I have been asked to support “supporters of free and fair elections in Iran,” I have been asked to join a group called “Where is their vote?”, a group called “Where is MY vote?”, and something in Persian that I can’t read because I don’t read Persian.  I’ve been asked to shade my profile photo green (I’m standing against a green background–I’m lazy and that’ll have to suffice).  I’ve also been asked to become a supporter of Mir Hussein Moussavi, which I decided not to do because, other than the fact that people are protesting because they think he won the elections in June, I don’t really know that much about his politics and whether I support them.

Therein, of course, lies the rub: I still think about what I do on Facebook like it matters.  I have “friends” who clearly don’t.  Two weeks ago, I came back to my hotel in Cairo after a lovely evening watching the sufi dances in the old city, followed by a stroll through the part of the old city that’s now lit up at night.  I booted up my laptop since the Internet seemed to run faster in the wee hours of the night, and discovered that someone who went to high school with me for one year and recently friended me had posted an article from a Christian Web site freaking out because “Islam is trying to take over America” (*coughfirstcough*). I had no problem removing this individual as a friend since it was clear that we had nothing in common (and he clearly hadn’t actually looked at my profile long enough to determine that I’m a hellbound homo).

The same happened to a couple of people who kept trying to recruit me to causes like, “Impeach Obama now!” (Why the sitting president is worthy of impeachment for any reason other than being black a Democrat is beyond me.  Always amazes me that these are the same people who sat idly by while Tricky Dick Cheney sat there with a pair of scissors and cut up the constitution.)

My friend Will is currently on a campaign to remove all of the birthers from his roster of Facebook friends.  I don’t think I have any birthers in mine, although I can’t be sure because there are a few people who are permanently hidden (mostly because their status updates are a nonstop slough of quizzes, status updates from Mafia Wars, or invoke God just a few more times than I think a normal person should when, say, mentioning that you just got home from the grocery store–praise Jesus!).

And don’t even get me started on those bizarre high school competitions to see who can garner the most friends.  There’s a reason that my profile is now on permanent lockdown.

All this is to say that Facebook is starting to spoil a little bit, like cheese left out in the sun for a week.  I’m curious to see what the next big thing in social networking will be … because I’m totally going to join it, and then blog about how much it annoys me.  Just like everyone else

Tags: art, bla, blog, cairo, cheese, elections, fes, friends, god, Home, ice, Internet, iran, islam, life, lost, love, me, men, moving, politics, quizzes, sex, weird, Will, work