Over the last several months, I’ve come to the realization that Facebook makes me really, really sad. I’ve noticed a distinct inverse relationship between the number of friends I have on the network and the amount of joy, smiles, or simple non-annoyance they bring me. The virtual window into their lives Facebook provides has come to serve as a reinforcement of why I don’t regularly talk to most of these people, much less play an active role in their dull, meaningless existences. And I suspect that most feel the same way about me.
So, like a genocidal dictator sick of all those (insert ethnic group) mucking up my country’s (economy/morality/religious orthodoxy/racial purity/primetime comedy lineups) … it’s time for a purge.
However, rather unlike a genocidal dictator, I don’t really want to burn any bridges. So rather than meticulously prune my 650+ list of people I may or may not have been in the same room with at some point in my 30 years of life, I’m merely judging them based on the entertainment value their status updates bring me on a semi-regular basis and deciding whether to hide any future mindless, tedious pablum from them from my news feed. In this way I still get to appear popular and someone people generally enjoy being around or occasionally listening to, or at least laughing at, while avoiding the nearly constant agitation and rage they introduce to life. Win-win!
So, fair warning, Facebook friends who will probably never read this — I’ll probably not be reading your 1 millionth update on how funny your stupid kids are, or great your friend’s brother’s stupid band is, or how much fun you had at your oh-so-clever theme party on a party bus (Party Bus!). And I certainly won’t be looking at the pictures of you and your terrible friends at some terrible bar, and I won’t be cringing at your terrible captions that you and your terrible friends find terribly funny. You’re all terrible, and I want to know nothing more about you.
Whew. I feel better already.
See you on Facebook.
