12 Things I've Learned from Facebook this Week

Facebook, a fount of knowledge and cultural relevance, never lets me down. A short update from this past week's feed.

1. According to the color of my urine, I'm pretty healthy, despite my current sore throat, cough, muscle aches, congestion, and conjunctivitis. It's nice to know the color of my pee is keeping me alive.

2. I'm disgusting  because I leave my butter dish out on the counter all the fucking time. Apparently the classes are divided by those who leave their butter out and those who refrigerate.

3. The raw milk I drink is going to kill me and probably everybody close to me as well. Obviously I can't be trusted with dairy products.

4. If I eat enough organic coconut oil I won't get Alzheimer's. In fact, nobody has to get Alzheimer's. Good thing Julianne Moore won that Oscar before everybody found out about this miracle fat. I wonder if Mounds bars come in an organic version. That's where I'll get my coconut oil.

5. I missed 5 parties this weekend because I was sick. I was invited to 3 of them.

6. I'm the only person in America who's not watching The Walking Dead and Downton Abbey.

7. Some people spend their snow days making chocolate chip cookies, I assume because they haven't eaten all of the chips straight from the freezer already. Way to make the rest of us look like big, fat losers. Give me a cookie, please.

8. My nickname is Champ. I'm a grammar genius. I should live in Wisconsin.

9. Quizzes are stupid.

10. It's snowing.

11. Cats.

12. My friends drink a lot of beer, and according to the color of their urine, they pee beer too. I'm afraid it all tastes the same to me.


(Note: This is not a comprehensive list of what I learned on Facebook this week. I left some things off this list because it became a feminist rant so I wouldn't appear to be a snarky bitch.)

Like it? Click it!

Please direct your attention to the Facebook like button just to your right and down a wee bit. See it? Now click it. Click it hard. Mmmmm. Now wasn't that satisfying? Don't you just love a good click?

Oh, I know what you're thinking. Of course it wasn't a cookie, silly, but you never know where just a click of the button will lead you. It's like a promise. Just a tickle of a promise. A moist little lick of a promise. Just the barest scent on the breeze of a promise.

If nothing else, you will now get notices on your Facebook when I post a new missive of wisdom, and you might even get some little extras that don't quite make it to the blog. And you will make me very happy and next time I see you, you might get a cookie--if you're very very good*.

Now aren't you glad you clicked?

* Certain restrictions apply .... But you don't need to worry about the rules. Just do as I say and everything will be wonderful.

Facebook Connections 1

I did one of those "25 things about me" lists on Facebook yesterday after I'd been "tagged" so many times I couldn't remember who had tagged me. It was one of those serendipitous connections that I love so much--and that I'll be writing about next--that I geared my English 101 classes around lists and poetry this week. Once you start looking at and for lists, it's amazing how prevalent they are in our communication. But that's another post.

Shortly before I made the list , I was thinking how much time I waste checking my Facebook. And how very shallow most of it is. As I tell my students, we must always be aware of our rhetorical situation (audience, purpose, genre, stance, media/design). I've got Facebook friends who were students in the first class I taught (fall 2007), colleagues from the university, homeschool friends from around the country, people from my church, a sister, a son, someone from Chicago who may be an offspring of a distant relative of my ex-husband, and my ex-husband's niece (who is my niece too, damn blood). Some of these people are connected. Most aren't. It's a smorgasbord of people who know me in different facets of my life, who play different roles in my life, and some....well, I'm not sure why they haven't unfriended me. How deep can these connections go in such a disparate world?

When I wrote the 25 things. I was honest, but I didn't bare my heart. Not really. Facebook isn't a diary. As I read the lists my other friends posted, I felt honored to receive them. I knew the things they listed were important to them, things they wanted the people in their lives to know about them. We take such risks on these networks. We know real people will be reading what we write, but let's face it. We're writing in our own homes, at our solitary computers. It's not like meeting over a glass of wine and spilling 25 things about yourself. You get to think about it. And you don't have to drive home wondering if you should have called a cab.

So now I'm swinging back on the pendulum between shallow and significant, but not just because I wrote the 25 things, nor because my friends did. It's the responses I got. One friend said she only got halfway through mine before she "lost it" and she would have to read it later. Others told me the ones they agreed with.

And that niece, the one who is my ex's brother's daughter? She's the only one in ex's family who will have anything to do with me since he left me. After 30 years of being family, she's the only one. She invited me to her wedding last summer though. And she wrote this on my 25 things list: "Did I ever tell you how much I like you? Cause I do. And I think my mom shares your sentiments about #9 + 15..." And those words were not shallow, nor were the tears I shed when I read them. Sometimes a lot can happen with just a few little words on a computer screen.

What do you think? Shallow or significant? Do you consider your audience when you write on social networks to the point that you self edit what you say about the weather? Do you have a story about a time when you didn't care?

I have a lot more to say about social networks, but for today, I really just wanted to share the story about connecting with my niece.