now, tastes more like real life

Facebook is evil. And awesome. And evil.

I have been using it a lot more lately, for some reason. It's part of my general effusiveness of the moment. Oversharing. That is the whole point of Facebook and boy am I taking advantage of that.

Yesterday I purged my groups section. I deleted around 20 groups (you can't see it on my minifeed, because I have that set to private. Yes!). I decided it was no longer time to be in a group if it wasn't one I created or one that was really important or something related to my friends or current state of being. Hence, I deleted my membership from "Carmex Lovers Anonymous." Turns out the two girls who invited me to that group a year ago and were its only other members had also cleared themselves out so when I deleted myself I also deleted the group and removed one, just one, useless page from Facebook's annals. I took myself out of "Fans of Seinfeld." Because isn't that what the "TV" category on Facebook is for? For that matter I took myself out of "TV Lovers" or was it "I love my TiVo"? I can't tell. Whichever one, I'm out of there. Then I took myself out of groups like "Gay Marriage Killed the Dinosaurs" (it's sarcasm, isn't that hilarious!?) because I was already in "Pro Gay Marriage." I took myself out of "Students who feel sorry for students who think Stanford sucks" because, well, I am in "When I was your age, Stanford was cool" and I espouse that philosophy a whole lot more now than the former. I took myself out of "Students against students joining band" because I was one of only two members anyway and it's a losing battle and I'm not a student anymore. You get the picture. I did some editing. I left in "Joey Potter is a whore!" because we're geniuses. I left in a lot. I only managed to weed my groups list down to 48 or so. ADULTHOOD TRIUMPHS.

Sure.

So today I was browsing and on someone's site I found myself pondering the entry "Looking for." See there is "Interested in" (Men), then there is "Relationship status" (I leave this blank. Otherwise people stalk you), and then there is "Looking for." Well I never bothered to have that, thinking it's just a companion to "Relationship status" and what's the point, but then I thought, I can fill this out without having my status. I sat there and pondered. I looked at my profile. I considered what I would put there ("Friendship. Dating. Random play"). I moused over the "Edit" button.

And then I realized, what the hell am I doing?

I believe our generation is one that doesn't believe things are official unless they are documented in detail somewhere online. So, a relationship is official, or officially over, when it is on Facebook. I am not "looking for" anything unless that little box is filled out. If I don't manage to complete all my book reviews on goodreads.com, well, have I really read those books? Just askin'.

So I resisted. I closed Facebook. I angrily messaged Cristina and Becca and told them how much I hate Facebook for feeding in me this desire to document and list everything to make it "real," despite Facebook existing in a virtual environment. I thought seriously for a few minutes about the implications of this, you know, what it means to be part of our generation (an interest, I might add, that I had until recently listed on Facebook), the obsession with lists, that plan I had to write a non-fiction piece that was a) entirely composed of lists or b) a take-off on a Facebook profile or c) (tangent) a take-off on a blog entry. (Kill me now. And don't steal my damn ideas.)

Then I was talking to Renata and she mentioned someone who I wanted to look up online and so I did. And I was looking at the listed groups and I looked at them. And this one was hilarious! And I joined it!

So. Like I said. Facebook. We hate and we love it. God damn us, Generation I/ME/YOU.

(On another side note. Anyone notice how all these books/movies are coming out with long titles and lots of pronouns? Like I Love You More than You Know, Me and You and Everyone We Know, No One Belongs Here More Than You, You Don't Love Me Yet. WHY! Is it part of what it means to be our generation!? A trend? It's got 4 examples so according to the Times/Gawker it is a trend. Or since two of them are Miranda July, does it not count?)