Like a gazillion other folks around the world, I have set up a facebook page. Not enthusiastically, mind you. If I remember right, initially some ‘friend’ emailed me a message or something and I had to join facebook to view the message. Then some other ‘friend’ sent me a message about how ‘pale’ I looked with that shadow bust profile pic and so I stuck a profile pic up there on my fb page.
I then tried to ignore fb as much as possible. But our four kids are on it. And they are pretty spiffy with it. I occasionally click on their pages and post some fogey-sounding thing on their wall or send a personal message.
I now have about 95 friends, having accumulated friends through friends of friends and other friends who keep friending new friends and sending friend requests.
I share the computer with our daughter, Megan, who checks her facebook several times a day. One day recently she was on fb and it appeared that she needed to refriend most of her friends, that somehow they had dropped off her fb as friends, and were now lined up in front of her in a long row to “add as friend”(?). Which, of course, she did- she clicked down the row on every one of them. Except it was my fb page she was on – those ‘friends’ had been automatically generated to my page (compliments of fb) as suggested ‘friends’. Now, having sent out friend requests from me from my fb page to about thirty of her friends, the confirmations started coming back. “So-and-so (Megan’s ex music teacher from Middle School) has confirmed your friend request.” “Nooooo!!!” “So-and so (my son’s ex-girlfriend) has confirmed you….” “CRAP!” These friend confirmations came filtering back for several days. Because, hey! You don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings by NOT accepting their friend request, do you?, Even if you never met this person in your life.
I’m gradually weeding through my ‘friends’ and silently unfriending these various ‘friends’ I don’t even remotely know.
And I do look at Megan’s facebook. Except today, when something strange happened with facebook. I spent about an hour of my life trying to figure it out and finally sent the following private message to our son, Aaron:
“Something evil and weird has happened to our fb at home – Megan and I are both disappearing from fb – I see she is not one of your friends anymore, however, I’m pretty sure you didn’t unfriend her. I was going to just look at her page and discovered she has disappeared from my ‘friend’ list. If I search for her – fb cannot find her – so I thought I’d search for her on your fb and send her a message – but she’s not on your fb. I am not on her fb and she can’t find me if she does a fb search.(I tried) It’s annoying and infuriating – I can’t even send a custom message to fb to explain the problem – if you try to find me through search on fb then my page does not come up.(!!!!) Don’t know why I”m telling you this – see if you can find Megan and friend her again… She isn’t on your fb as a friend is she? (As far as I can tell…) I don’t know what the hell is going on….”
To which Aaron replied:
“Uh…..Megan is still my fb friend….”
Huh? I call Aaron. He’s at work. I’m apologetic. Okay, so maybe I need a day job. He suggests, “Mom, maybe she has blocked you.”
“Huh?”
“Megan, did you block me on facebook?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I think you know whether you did or didn’t”
Okay, so she did block me on facebook, and has subsequently disappeared from every friend’s fb page that I click on who has ‘friended’ her. Likewise, I have disappeared on any ‘friend’s’ page she clicks on that has me as a ‘friend’. But, she can call out to me from anywhere she is in the house. We hang out together half of every day. We take long walks together. I still tuck her in and kiss her at night.
“How about you unblock me? Do you know how?”
“Maybe.”
We go to the computer together. Sure enough. There’s her block list. There I am, along with a surprisingly long list of other ‘friends.’ (???)
I send her a ‘friend’ request. She accepts it.
Whew! We’re back online. Connected.
I do find it a comfort to know that you can literally snuff someone out of your facebook world.
And where social networking is concerned, all of my kids, even Megan, are at least five steps ahead of me.
Tags: blocked on fabebook, facebook
The Decompression of a Boomer 
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