ramblings on friendship and facebook

It is weird how we define friendships now and how Facebook comes into play. Now life is a tangled mess of reality and virtuality, it never matches up. one of our lives tends to be a faulty simulation of the other. Take Facebook, usually a great way to stay in contact with your friends... but what about those people we have listed as friends, but we barely say anything to in real life. Those faces in the hallways who would rather cower in the corner or pretend to not recognize you. Maybe my memory is just different than most, but I tend to never forget a person and can remember with great detail first impressions.

During freshman orientation, I had a very brief conversation with someone who was entering as a film major. He told me about his favorite films and then I ended up talking about The Decemberists, because I was wearing one of their shirts... but after that conversation we never ran into each other and barely spoke. when I finally saw him again, I remembered the entire conversation, and was able to even come up with his the name of his hometown (which is an incredibly small town in ruralia). Even after re-introducing myself two years later, we still do the pretending game.

Maybe "friending" each other on Facebook would remedy those moments of pretending but it is not really a path I would like to explore. It does not bother me to not be Facebook friends because we are not even at the level of passerby "hello" exchangers in the hallways. This is where my curiosity comes into play with other people. The idea of discovering at my own leisure with minimal effort the intricacies of someone's personality, or how they like to portray themselves virtually makes companionship seamless at times.

When the situation is the complete opposite and I am Facebook friends with someone who has essentially stopped our friendship in reality I hesitate to cease our virtual friendship as well. Both of us keep the virtual connection between us after things have obviously changed. It also feeds the monkey of curiosity on our backs when seeking out updates on each other's lives could be drastically uncomfortable otherwise.

With the information page and the idea of a wall of conversation, history of interests, important events, etc. comes the immediate display of similarities in music taste, movies, activities, and interests without any true interaction. Thus leads to the beginnings of information obtained through reality vs virtuality; and more importantly how we handle the knowledge obtained with online investigation rather than conversation. The options are to bring it up virtually and therefore display the method by which it was discovered, or to casually mention it through some desperate attempt to find similarities or to dig for further information without worry of being too much of a creep.

Therein lies my biggest conundrum. I have such a problem with digging for information, and though it could easily be remedied by saying, "Oh, I saw on Facebook... blah blah blah" I withhold information and begin to feel at times like a corrupt defense attorney during discovery. Maybe it would be easier to condense my facebook to the people I regularly interact with but sometimes the thrill of easily obtained gossip or scandal is just too damn fun.