Mr. Facebook

Okay, I'm going to follow up on the Facebook thing because Mr. Pigs says I am publicly making fun of him. (Which is true.) I've made some observations today and I think I know why it's catching my attention so much more than if he, say, signed up for Google Reader or something.

I feel like I'm watching from the same point of view that the high school/college kids have felt as the "adults" took over Facebook. Kind of like you would cringe if, like, your mom was on. Watching Mr. Pigs today as he hee hawed about his friend James being given a restraining order through one of Facebook's applications, I was reminded of when my parents' generation discovered email.

People my parents' age are REALLY into forwards. Like, the forwards you saw 15 years ago when email was new and forwarding was funny. Now what do you do when you get something that says "FW: " at the top? You delete it to avoid scrolling through 4,000 names and email addresses that weren't politely deleted only to get to pictures of dogs in Halloween costumes or the dreaded Snowball Fight from 1999.

Something else that's catching on is this new-fangled thing called "texting". It's not that our elders really want to do it, but they are proud that they know what it is. My favorite moment at my in-laws this Christmas was when I received a text and they said something about their phones didn't do that. There was a pause and my MIL said proudly, "You know texting....ARE YOU THERE? Like the letter "R" and the letter "U" and there?" She laughed uproariously. I did too, but for my own private reasons.

This all brings me back to Mr. Pigs and his new gang of friends on Facebook, which now apparently includes my friend Shea's husband. (Sorry, Shea.) It's just comical to see how excited he is, but in the words of Shea, now where are we supposed to hang out? The comedic aspect is the cringe-worthy kind at best. Just wait until he finds the IM feature. Or figures out how to add 35 applications and starts sending me plants to save the rainforest.