Wastebook

I signed up for a Facebook account a short while after my wife did, for no other reason, really, than it would be one more method to keep in touch with her during the day.  I thought (and still think) that it's a mostly silly social networking site, and is inundated with juvenile applications you can add to your own home page to personalise it.

The only benefit I've realised from it is getting in touch with a high school buddy who, since then, joined the army and has served two tours in Afghanistan.  I'm glad to have reconnected with him, but the rest of the 'old friends' who have found me I never kept in touch with for a reason, you know?  Not that I mean to come across as pretentious (which I know is hard when using that word, ha!), but I keep a small circle of friends and don't work hard at clinging to loose threads.

So far, the only thing I really do on Facebook is update my profile status on a nearly daily basis because, like blogging, it allows me to talk about myself without worrying about having to listen to feedback if I don't want to.  That's when it struck me that I could combine the two and I could blog about updating my Facebook status.  (Sweet Narcissus!)

For those not hip to the Facebook jive, each user has a 'status' field that always starts with "Firstname is..." and then you get to fill in the rest to be displayed at the top of your profile for your friends to read.  Here, then, are most of my "Simon is..." status updates since I thought to keep track.

Yay me!

Simon is...

pining for the fjords, and the chjevrolets, too.

an infathomable mystery seeking evidence to solve himself.

dueling rainbow faeries in a sleep-deprived  state of hallucination -- and he's winning!

a lech.  Which is better than a lich, unless you're into that whole 'undead' thing.

keeping most of his naughty thoughts to himself.

very skinny when viewed solely in the X-ray spectrum.

the very model of a modern major... something or other.

not nearly as excited about carpet as his wife is, unless it is his wife's.

mostly water, but you'd need a really good filter to drink it.

annoyed by the grammatical inconsistencies he finds in so many other Facebook status updates.  Third person, people!

approaching somnolence like the first time Adam approached Eve.

London, Simon is France, Simon is wearing blue underpants.

awash with the afterglow of ice cream after taking Amy out for her birthday lunch.

asserting that Han shot first, in case you were undecided and needed to be swayed.

10% narcoleptic and 90% hot-blooded stud.

suffused with a sense of disimpressedness at the state of television.

John Malkovich's stunt double.

thinking of good intentions, so the way to hell is nicely paved for his crazy train.

really Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago.

trying to think of appropriate haikus to write about winter.

perpendicular.

resigned to cold fingertips until May(ish).

pretty, oh so pretty.  He is pretty, and witty, and gay!

fairly certain that word you keep saying does not mean what you think it means.

annoyed by malapropisms.

a neologistical purveyor of pomp and pretention.

Comments

[Mark]

All very good, but my personal favorites were the carpet one and the one where you rhyme "France" with "underpants."

This is the way I feel about MySpace. A lifelong friend (which is different from close, in the sense that we don't really stay in touch much since college) got me on it, and within a week I was looking for a better place to blog. Because of former high school (and a few college) acquaintances, I now have a list of Friends that I rarely said a word to when I spent seven hours each day in the same building with them. I've even denied a friend request (her comments section was far too vulgar for me to associate myself with her).

A select few I have been very glad to hear from again, and make me look forward to the impending 20-year reunion. So, there's that, and even with all the crap e-mails they send, Reunion.com and Classmates.com never have done that.

Wow, I managed to make my comment about myself. And you think you're narcissistic? But, really, what else are comments for, just another, "I totally agree," and then nothing else? Please.

[Alec Lynch]

I can say that--sadly for facebook and happy for you?--your status updates are one of its brighter spots for me.

I'm kind of in the same boat in that there's a few people I'm glad I found again, but it seems half the people that friend request me only knew me to look at me (if that). I actually did a test with one friend to find out if removing them from my list notified them in any way so that I could perhaps trim down my list a bit without offending people. I figure we don't actually chat anyway, so they'll never notice.

I'd managed to stay away from almost all the applications, but the Risk one now means I spend more time on it than is possibly heathy. I am both very proud and very, very depressed that I'm on the leader board for it.

[Marc]

Hey, great idea! They must keep a record of your statuses online there...I'm going to go check right now.

[Marc]

Alas, you can only view about 20 status' back...

[Amy]

I love facebook. I have reconnected with a lot of friends since joining. When I moved away from my home town about 8 years ago. I left with the feeling of good riddance. I kept in touch with only my family. Now since being on facebook I have reconnected with the ones I care to and ignored the ones I don't. We are going back to my hometown for Christmas and I intend to have some Christmas cheer with the ones that are still there. It has been a great thing for me.
I am always checking the status thingy. It makes for fun interaction with people you don't get to chat with enough. Like one that would say... whatshisname is... waiting for the news. Then that is just an opening for an email saying "what news??, do you have something to tell me??".

[Moksha Gren]

I signed up for Facebook a few weeks ago, I can't even remember what possessed me. But I have about four unanswered friend requests waiting for me. I'll probably get around to saying yes...but I just can't bring myself to care too much. The one thing I like about it is that it is easy to search for old friends. I dont' want to keep in touch with them there, mind you...but I can redirect to them to my (currently stalled) blog or see if they have one of their own. I'm far more inclined to read an old friend's writing than their whimsical little phrases (no offense, Si...they were very funny)

[marian]

Facebook seems to be THE major mode of communication for my college-age son and his friends, but I'm honestly not fond of it. I think I signed up a while back but then changed my mind once I got in there. For me it would be just one more place to waste my time online, as if I don't have about 75 of those already (this site and my own not included of course!). But maybe some time I'll give it another look.

[Simon]

Mark, feel free to talk about yourself in my own comments. You'll note I do much the same at your place. (By the way, I understand you're hitting on my wife on Gmail chat. You dog.) I've never touched Myspace, and I never intend to.

Alec, I deleted one friend on Facebook a while back, knowing that it's done discretely, and he "friended" me again about a week later. It's those ones I WANT to avoid! Congrats on the Risk leader board. You geek.

Marc, I've been keeping a Notepad file with my statuses in it. Judge me based on that, if you will....

Amy darling, connecting with old friends is the *best* reason to get on and stay on Facebook. It's all the extra crap that tags along as baggage that I really don't like. The staying in touch part, that I totally get.

Moksha, I'm TOTALLY GOING TO FRIEND YOU!! ROFL, LOL, ETC. Whimsical little phrases aside, I don't think you'd get any more out of it than I do. Thanks for thinking I'm funny though - justification is a mainstay of my ego's diet.

Marian, your son is right in the middle of the targeted demographic for Facebook. The staying in touch part of it is completely understandable, as I mentioned above to my wife, but there's so much other CRAP that is tempting to slap on that it's largely more effort than any reward you'll reap from it. Time Vortex of Death!!

[Amy]

Okay, Mark wasn't hitting on me. You don't want to have that on there and Shannon read it and cause a huge problem in that household do you??? You know how my mind works...

[Émilie B]

Ah, thanks for sharing those with us non-trendy unsuscribed people.

I'm resisting Facebook. We had our reunion about two months back - the catalyst for it being a Facebook itself, I believe - and I had a lot of fun there and it was great to see all those people again, but why would I suddenly need (or have the time to) stay in touch with all of these people? I haven't even signed up, and I've already got one "old friend" emailing me for some help with one of her projects. I never can say no to a request, but this time I did. I mean, come on! I politely sent a suggestion for her problem and explained I didn't have the time to get into this at that point - which was all true. She didn't reply again. I don't know if she was offended, but you know what... I'm not a teenager anymore, and I don't care.

Seriously, though, Frank signed up to assess the site, and so far nothing he's shown me is very convincing.

[Paul]

I signed up for facebook as a method of possibly reconnecting with old accquaintances. I refuse to download any of the applications because they require you to agree to let facebook access information from your computer, which they then sell to demographics companies. The purpose of facebook is to track users' web usage and sell that information.

[Marc]

I judge in favour of you for keeping your status's' in notepad. I used to do the same with my blog's tagline by bracketing old ones with html to hide them. And there they sat, invisible, in my header.

I admire you for your record keeping.