Out of the blue

I’ve been in a funk.

I have been a member of Facebook since early last year. But since I am not really a very sociable person and the few people I know were not on FB, I sort of abandoned that pursuit. Then sometime this year I found out that friends and acquaintances are already members of that social networking. So I started adding friends one at a time, deliberating for a very long time if it is good to add this person and that former classmate.

Then the paranoid thing I did on FB.

I opened two new gmail accounts. I added one to my sister’s account. I made the other a friend of the first account. It made that second account two friendships away from me. This second account is used to check if from that separation my profile and my wall postings are visible to the general public. The wall postings are. Then I realized why do I care if my wall postings are accessible? I am blogging aren’t I? They are more a window into my mind and heart than these wall posts, so I sort of forgot about those accounts.

Then an unexpected thing happened, somebody requested to be added to my list of friends. I did not know that person but he’s a friend of an acquaintance so I accepted his request. It was also around this time that I remembered those new gmail accounts and lo and behold when I checked the second one, two requests for friendship. The slide into the funk began then because I actually know those persons who requested to be added to that made up persona while there was only ever one request for friendship to the real me and that from somebody I did not know.

This certainly made my cynicism rose to the surface. It was partly my fault of course because I also did not put my real name on that profile (or I change my real name after it received no requests for friendship) but it has at least more personality because of the wall posts but nary a request from really literally dozens of people I know in that social networking. It was I who made all the requests. While this made-up name with a beautiful photo and zero posts received requests from friends. So what’s the draw? Aside from the beautiful photograph attached to the made-up name there was nothing on that account, therefore to my book boring. Maybe those girls think that he’s lonely with only one friend ever on his list? Or maybe girls on the prowl for boyfriends and husbands are hoping to make this beautiful male one of their prospects?

I was actually repentant for a time, not using my real name on my real account, until I recalled all the one-sided friendships I’ve made all these years. You know the kind—a friend in need is a friend indeed or whatever that cliché says. And it was never I who was in need, rarely ever. And so I said to hell with friendship.

Ironically, it was the unknown person who requested to be added to my list of friends who took me out of the doldrums. Rather it was a post on his wall, directed to who knows whom but it made me laugh out loud. It made me realized there are people who have greater relationship problems than I ever had and that sentimental and romantic outpourings if not constructed with correct grammar become ridiculous.