Unliked

I can't handle Facebook any longer. I'm un-liking it. It sounds like a confession made in front of a group of addicts and I don't think that's too far off. I've been unsubscribing from people that I don't know, and despite their label as "friends", they drive me crazy. Who cares what you ate for breakfast, that you went to the gym again, that your baby is eating cheerios for the first time or that your dog is chasing her tail and she's so precious? Seriously, we say things on Facebook that we would never bring up in normal conversation. Imagine walking up to a friend and having a conversation like this:

Friend: What's on your mind?
You: I just went to the gym for the third time today.
You: If you like what I said, tell me.

The real conversation would sound like this:

Friend: What's on your  mind?
You: I just went to the gym for the third time today.
Friend: What the hell is wrong with you?
You: Are you unliking my comment?
Friend: This is super awkward. Unliking? I don't care.
You: Well, you should care. I think I'm going to un-friend you.
Friend: You're a nut job. I'm ending our friendship before you un-friend me. You're fired.

I wonder how Facebook is changing the way we have conversations and  the ways we relate to one another. I wonder even more how Facebook is feeding our egos. The status update is our personal billboard where we typically post the best parts of our lives. Imagine posting things like this:

"I just stepped on the scale and I'm the heaviest I've been since high school"
"I watched 4 hours of reality TV today, at an entire bag of chips and drank 2 liters of soda"
"I hate myself"
"I'm having an affair"
"I haven't been to the dentist for 12 years"

I've never seen updates that are this honest. No, we typically post the best things or the most mundane and then call those things our life. People are like icebergs, though. You only see the top and the bulk is hidden. I just wonder if Facebook encourages us to hide even more of ourselves.

Oh, and the other day I saw an update that said if I didn't repost the religious message I just read, then I must love the devil. What? My status as a child of God will change if I don't digitally repost a sentence? There are others, too. Like the ones that say "if you love your wife repost this." Yes, this is how we show love in our strange world! 

If I do return to Facebook I'm going to return with an attitude of honesty. I know you really don't care what I'm doing right now. I don't care that much either. And, despite not reposting that religious sentence, I attended Christian church on Sunday, have not scrawled pentagrams into my arms and have not read the satanic bible...yet.

p.s. The above fictitious updates are not true about me. Like you care...