Today, I discovered that an old friend of mine, someone who was one of my first friends on Facebook and who at one time or another was a friend, a co-worker, a highschool chum and a confidante has de-friended me on Facebook.
I'm not going to lie, it hurt me a little.
However, the first question that popped into my mind after the hurt itself subsided was the inevitable "when was the last time we actually spoke?"
That answer depressed me more than the realization that she might no longer be in my life.
The internet is a different place these days than it was even 10 years ago. It has become a digital meetingplace for those who have lost touch with each other via sites such as Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, Tumblr, even Blogspot. The internet is simultaneously a place to flaunt oneself and a place to hide; you can customize your anonymity to a fault. Facebook, as I mentioned in my first post, is particularly to blame for this phenomenon of reconnecting with long-lost people of all kinds - highschool friends, family, university friends, even former teachers and professors, and we seem to take pride in collecting friends on these social networking sites like trading cards or pokémon.
There are just as many benefits to this evolution of the internet as there are drawbacks. The obvious benefit comes from the idea of reconnecting with someone who has been recently lost, but more recently found again. Childhood friends fall under this example. I, for one, found a few childhood friends on Facebook and friended them under the presumption that they would accept me as I am, almost a decade and a half since I last spoke to them. That they would even remember me, for that matter.
The drawbacks are notable and significant. After you get past the stage of "catching up", what happens next? Say you live in a city several hours from these people, with no feasible way to meet up for something as simple as a cup of coffee. Then all that remains to connect you with these fragments from your past is a website, which is neither eternally permanent or tactile. To remain in touch, you must submit to the idea that you have to talk to them over the internet, without the clear benefits that come with human interaction. Say you or your friend cease to use Facebook for an extended period of time, what then? Then you find yourself back on the shelf of friends they "used to know", or you forget their birthday or neglect to congratulate them on their marriage/baby/graduation, or you remember, but it goes unnoticed. You become simply a fly on their wall. Then the day will come when they decide to cut down their friend list, and your name will appear, and they will de-friend you, since your presence in their life is no longer necessary. As when children decide to trade cards, and a card which was precious to you a few months ago is suddenly disposable.
And life will go on as normal, since these actions occur as footnotes to your existence. They are insignificant in themselves, until the day when you realize you are no longer a part of someone's life.
Facebook is a fine tool for connecting with people with whom you have lost touch. But then it becomes your responsibility to keep the connection alive, and even to find a way to connect with these people away from the keyboard, as alien a thought as that might be in this technological age.
Because despite popular belief, behind each keyboard of a person you "friend" and "de-friend" is a human being.
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