Facebook...I Don't Get It.

I remember first hearing about Facebook back in 2005 when I was at DePauw. Back then the social site required a college email account that belonged to one of several registered schools throughout the country (i.e. not everyone could sign up for it then like they can now). Classmates would talk about the social site seemingly all of the time, mostly saying how it was awesome how you could keep up with all of your friends and stuff. I remember not understanding the fascination back then as well. Why would you need a site to keep track of all your friends when you see them every day at class? It got to the point where I was hearing about this site so much I decided that I needed to check it out. Plus I had had a few people ask me if I was on Facebook and I kind of felt like a loser when I said no. So with that being said, I reluctantly signed up for the site way back in 2005.

My friend list grew slowly and quite frankly for the first few years that I had an account I rarely even logged on. However, I eventually added a profile picture and filled out some information about myself and before I knew it I had like 40 or 50 friends on the site (Don't get me started on the high school or college aged girl who has 1,000+ friends. Give me a break. Not even the President has 1,000 friends). Over the past year or so I have used the site more often, like maybe once or twice a month instead of just a few times a year. However, over the past few months I have found myself again questioning the purpose of the site.

First off, most of my friends on the site are either people from my home town or Sarah's cousins, most of which I've never even met. I have added some people I went to school with in Erie or who I've met along the way, but most of my friends are people from Loogootee. What I really don't understand is proper Facebook etiquette. For instance, I will get friend requests from people I went to high school with who I never once hung out with. When I get such requests I think to myself "we never once hung out before so why would I want to be your Facebook friend?" Now, there are some people that I know and that I think are nice people and if this is the case I will add them as a friend even if we never hung out before. But sometimes I will get requests from people who I know who they are but I have never once had a conversation with them and it really confuses me as to why they would even want to add me, let alone act out on the thought. With all of this being said, I try to be nice and add most requests because in these cases you are sending the message that not only will I not hang out with you in person, I don't even want to be your cyber buddy, which honestly is quite a slap in the face.

The above instances are obvious questionable friend adds, but all of this begs the question: When is it appropriate to ask someone to be your Facebook friend? Does it just take one conversation? Do you have to know the person for a while? Do you have to hang out with them in a social setting? I honestly don't know the answer to this question. Most of my friends have come from people asking me but sometimes I will meet a person or think of a person to add and I always get nervous when I click on the "send a friend request" link because I never quite know if it is appropriate. Oh, and the thought of digital rejection is traumatizing.

The etiquette does quite honestly confuse me, but I think the bigger question here is who cares? Just here within the past few months I have realized that having someone as a friend on Facebook in no way impacts my life or my relationship with that person. It isn't like you have to be Facebook friends to be real friends in real life. In fact, most of my best friends in real life don't even have Facebook accounts. The only difference all of this makes is if I care to know when people are doing laundry or to see people's vacation photos, and quite frankly the answer to that question in most instances is no, I don't care.

I have thought about deleting my account (is that even possible?) on a few occasions here recently. I haven't pulled the trigger yet but I have been close. I don't want to sound like that old man who doesn't have an email account, i.e. I don't want to not be hip. But I honestly don't understand the fascination with Facebook. To me it adds little to nothing positive to my life and quite frankly it adds some anxiety and has a lot more potential for harm than good.