The year 2009 was definitely a time of change and transition for me. Some were bad and some were good. One of the bad ones was the slow death of a friendship... to some extent it seems like it was only staying alive via life support (a combination of my patience, my inability to come out and express my feelings, and my feeling of obligation to "be nice" despite many an angry time). Then the plug was pulled and it died only to ressurect as a brain eating zombie who's medium was/is facebook.
I'd like to believe I tried my best to burry the frienship and move on with my life, taking special consideration of mutual friends and trying not to put them in the middle, but there was this one tie that I didn't break - oh that good old technology facebook. A whole other world is in virtual land and if that's the only place the zombie can get me now, well then I have my own personal zombie land going on. At first I decided not to "delete" this contact, nor did i put her on limited profile, or any of the other usual things people do when they're pissed off at someone. I just let it be. My sister told me once that the thing that annoyed her the most about past friends is when they delete you but keep a bunch of people on their list who they never talk to and you know they aren't friends with...slap in the face! so I decided that in light of this and the fact that a close history with many a good time did once exist , I would avoid "expressing" myself via facebook wars. However, the other side did not have the same mentality...
I was immediately put on limited profile... Whatever. I noticed it. It wasn't that annoying as I rationalized what I believed was her perspective and why she would do that. It was like this for awhile. I knew however that she was watching my facebook because I posted a happy birthday to one of our mutual friends who is closer to her than me (I did not post happy birthday on her wall a month earlier and I heard through the grapevine that she was mad about this. I was just surprised she expected that from me after what happened...) Later that day, I decided to check if I was still on limited profile for some goshdarn reason, only to discover it was even more limited than before. To the point where all this person was to me on facebook was a profile picture - "this person only shares certain information with everyone" was all it said. I realized she was pissed off but she was always pissed off so I didn't feel particularly bad about it. Life continued for awhile longer.
Then I decided to have a new years party that was kind of last minute. Since her attending events still showed up in my news feed for some reason, I was already aware in november that her and a few other friends were going out for new years. Anyways, just before christmas I invited a bunch of people to my news years party, including two guys that came a few years ago for new years... within minutes one of my good friends accepted and on the news feed it said "{name} is attending last minute news years party". About twenty minutes later it showed a post from former friend to both those two guys I invited "you should come out with us for new years!!" (inviting them with her...). It was too conincidential, especially since we both know those two guys don't like clubbing, so I came to the conclusion that she must be monitoring what was going on and then trying to make people choose.... or at least those two guys... Once again, I felt a bit frustrated and annoyed but tried to let it go and brush it off as my own paranoia... New years came and went.
I wanted to see pictures of my friends who didn't spend new years at my house... is there anything so wrong with that? Only to find that at least two of them had put me on limited profile to their pictures... why? I know this is specific to me because mutual friends can see these pictures. What is going to happen from me seeing their fun? absolutely nothing besides me wasting time ... what did I do to them that made them have to hide their life from me? (other than being addicted to facebook...). I was a bit annoyed at this too...
In light of a new year, a time to past the past in the past and move forward, combined with this frustration, I decided that I would cut off the zombie from my life and hope that it would all fizzle out. I deleted former friend. I thought it would be over.
A couple days later I noticed that a few of our mutual friends had deleted me from their facebook... but not aquaintances that I had introduced them to? I guess my fears have been realized. The one thing that kept annoying me this whole time was my own fear that somehow zombie w0uld consume other people too... I kept telling myself - have faith that these people are mature and that they see you as what you are and not what someone tells them you are. That they rely on their own personal interaction with you to determine your character and not on someone elses... that they will realize that you haven't done anything wrong to them and that what goes on between you and one of their friends is only between you and that person... I kept holding on to this faith and the knowledge that if someone does decide otherwise that they are not a true friend anyways... The most annoying part of it is knowing that these people made their choice without ever asking me about my feelings or my side... without truly knowing me... which I guess is also an influence on why they did it.
I'm not devasted by the loss, as it shows me who are my true friends, I'm just annoyed that zombie is still trying to get me. Especially since, for some reason.... there are incongruencies... like my sister is on limited profile to one of my friend's page (probably so I can't see pictures through her) but I am only on partially limited. I speculate that this friend was asked to put me (and possibly my sister too) on limited but didn't want me to be mad so only limited certain things from me, but all from my sister (assuming she probably wouldn't notice anyway). Then close friends who were deleted by former friend at the same time as I was blocked (haha, I'm blocked... btw), and who are also on limited profile to same people who deleted me are not deleted by them even though they NEVER talk and are only aquaintances (mostly via fairmont vacation). It doesn't make sense.
You may be wondering how I noticed all this stuff. The answer is simple: Farmville. It's a very addictive game that allows me to spend more than an hour on facebook all in one sitting... you can also get stuff to level up from people posting things on their wall (it shows up in news feed) so reading news feed takes up part of that time. The problem now is that I need to reduce my overall time on facebook because of school. Usually its not that hard for me. Now I have a new concern though... and that is checking to make sure my friends don't start dropping like flies... then I will know that something is going on.... like a rumour has been made - probably as a result of the zombie. I just wish I could show and tell everyone that I have been doing nothing related to former friend to have any new rumours emerging. I've been keeping to myself, having lunches with my friends, and enjoying my life outside facebook (not including farmville).
3 comments:
Man.. i totally didn't realize. Facebook is just becoming too insane, i think everyone, including myself, need to chill out and stop taking Facebook so seriously, and take it for what it is, social networking, not a war to be won. Whether it's too show everyone how awesome your life is through updates or pic postings, or how many friends you have. It's just for fun.
Agreed. Thus the reason I have decided the only thing to do now is wait it out and try and ignore weird stuff happening. My plan is to use facebook as a profile page as it is meant to be and nothing more. Luckily, as long as I don't go snooping around too much I won't have to actually acknowledge any of this happening and I can move on, especially since it is now only existing in a few places that I don't snoop very much.
Post a Comment