I am aware that everyone and their mother says this, but the only reason why I ever signed up for Facebook in the first place is because I thought I was going to die. The year was 2008 and I was going through the most traumatic period in my life. Imagine walking to your car in an closed garage, alone, and being pounced on by an Asian tiger. There is no one around to help you, and you're pretty sure that this is the end. But for some reason the tiger gets tired of you and walks away. That's what happened to me.
At the time I was sure that I wouldn't make it through the summer. I had my affairs in order and I was already saying my last goodbyes to my mother and extended family. I played a few more games with my brother, and took my ledgers off the wall. My purpose for signing up with Facebook was twofold: One, It was a desperate last gasp for air in a sinking ship at Pearl Harbor. I was desperately looking for someone who might be able to save me (for I couldn't save myself yet). Even though no one could have possibly known how to help me, or didn't care, you think that way when death is staring you in the face. Second, I just wanted to see a familiar face before I died.
I wished to relive my glory days (as Bruce Springsteen plays) back when I was the grunge bench-warmer of 47th street. Back in the late nineties and early 2000s my family had made a major breakthrough. After a lifetime of shelter-hopping and wearing out our welcomes, my mother doubled down on work. We were now poor with real money, not food stamps. We went from a hot dog covered in sugar to 24 hours of a N64 Wrestling Game and Magic Carpet on Windows '95. My own personal breakthrough is happening today, however.
My days as an outsider looking in on Hyde Park were - by far - the most beneficial time of my life. Being on the south side teaches you how to be a man. And boy did my teammates and I ever get clowned for being the worst football players in Chicago. It was this history, also my impending doom, that attracted me to joining Facebook.
True to form, I signed up and put up my profile. I assiduously notified the entire internet that I was a virgin (at 23) in my bio and it was off to the races. Like a mother who's infant had just been kidnapped, I believed that there were only two people from Kenwood Academy that would have me contact: V and S. They were two sides of the same coin. The extent of my relationship with V was that she watched me flunk advanced Biology class freshman year, in the most embarrassing way. I was too much of...what you would call a cad, in freshman year, and had been demoted for not doing my homework. In my relationship with S, I was too much of a stereotypical bookworm and spent all of my class time trying to listen to mister P over rowdy classmates instead of sitting in the back, like S, and laughing it up with the freshman quarterback.
They didn't like me, but they would "tolerate" me (I still don't understand the meaning of that word). And as a desperate, dying animal, that was the best that I could possibly hope for: Just someone to listen to my problems as I slipped away, something to ease the pain. I begged them for different things, based on what I remembered about their personalities. They quickly shut me down, and then I calmed a bit. Soon I was addicted to Facebook and within two years I was sending friend requests to everyone I could remember from "The Wood," most of which didn't know me. I unfriended them all, including V and S and re-friended them again. It was a pornographic addiction - bingeing and purging (or more accurately, download, shame and delete). I would look at their pictures of hangouts and functions and children and imagine that I too could be a part of that world some day.
John Jenkins didn't die that year, and that was the problem (That's what she said. No pun intended). Time went on and I was inexplicably invited to a musical event through Facebook. And for the first time, I could actually go because I had real money to spend, not food stamps. T invited me. I, at least, resented her throughout high school because back then she was dating a white boy for his money, in the black part of town, and I was on a liberal racial unity kick. She also wore green contacts, hiding her natural brown eyes. Times had changed, though. She was now dating a black rapper/promoter. It was the first time that I could remember being invited somewhere. I was certainly grateful at the time, but my Facebook life never lasted, no matter how many times I came back.
Facebook preyed on my immaturity and desperation and left me feeling like a sucker. "It's like a high school yearbook, but with real people!" My adolescent power fantasy statuses and comments were legendary, but only to me of course. Generally, when people join Facebook, they're thinking, "Finally, now that I have a leased Honda Civic or some new makeup, the it girl or the jock will see me as desirable and I will be invited into the fold. I will no longer be on the outside looking in." That's not true. No matter what you do on Facebook, you will always be remembered as the one who came to school with the wrong sneakers on, or who wouldn't put out. They won't respect you because they don't value what you bring to the table.
The other problem with Facebook is that people don't age well. Most people's parents never prepared them for success in the real world, teaching them that their "good genes" would be enough to see them through. They get decimated after high school. It's like they've been through three World Wars, five train wrecks and a shark attack, and it's only been five years!
At the very least, I was wise enough not to put any picture of myself or my family on Facebook, Snapchat or Twitter (Youtube is another story). Up until 2014 there was only one image of me the entire internet (my family is very phobic about this as well). I can't do what I did before and just clear out my friends list, because it's pornography. I just have to know that my favorite "pornstars" are there. If I do clear it out, I'll make a mad dash to re-friend everyone within a few weeks, and I'll feel extra unwanted when half of them ignore said friend request. At least I don't use Facebook anymore. That's got to count for something. I can't believe this Zuckerberg guy got rich by providing pictures of isolated people for us all to jerk off to. -JJ
