SONG 1:
Ben Folds Five - Your Redneck Past
roots! / the funny limbs that grow underground / that keep you from falling down / don't you think that you'll need them now?

just find a place where no one knows of your redneck past / yeah, you can easily dispose of your redneck past / you'll show them all back home

I can't think of the others just yet. Song submissions are welcome in the comments.

I'm growing less and less enchanted with Facebook. Remember that girl you were sort of friends with in Grade 5? Do you need to know what she's doing after work tonight? Because I certainly don't. I've grown to agree with Julian's primary reason for avoiding Facebook:

"Personally, I've stayed away from Facebook, not only because I perceive it to be the Web 2.0 (or are we on 3.0 by now?) version of MySpace, but because people's expressions of excitement at having found long-lost acquaintances are exactly what turn me off. I'm not interested in reconnecting with people that I've lost touch with for years; there's probably a legitimate reason for the loss of contact, and I'm happy letting sleeping dogs lie." (Julian's blog post here)

Of course, I don't really care about the data-mining aspect of it that he goes on to rant about, because I tend to agree with the "everything's in a database anyways" line of thought along with Matt Haughey (fortuito.us: Living online, with webb apps), but that's neither here nor there.

People I see on Facebook tend to fall into three categories:

1. People I currently know
   
2. People I used to know, as an awkward and often-teased elementary school kid
   
3. People I used to know, as a Christian nut

The first category, I talk to fairly frequently anyways. I've deleted a third of my 'friends' in the last week, but the ones I've kept tend to fall into this group. Mostly because I like to write ridiculous things on Sanda's wall.

The second category... are just weird. I don't know these people anymore. Half of them have gotten married and I stopped caring about them in the summer past Grade 8, so I haven't got a flipping clue who they married, and then they add me and I think "Who the F are you??" Because seriously... this lack of maiden names thing? It makes it hard to identify people. I don't need to know the daily trivia of your life if I didn't even have my period yet the last time we talked. And I don't really feel like sharing mine (note the irony of saying that on my oh-so-public blog). Then there are the people who sent me home crying many many days in elementary school and it's a damn good thing they haven't added me, because that would really stretch the definition of 'friend', not that Facebook hasn't mangled the word already. (The Facebook definition seems to include people you've met at least once, and Belinda Stronach. Who, it should be noted, will poke you back if you poke her. There is a whole Facebook group for people who have been poked by Belinda Stronach.)

The third category are almost impossible to avoid offending. How am I these days? Well, in your worldview, I'm going to hell and I'm living in sin with my (also hell-bound) boyfriend. Of course, if we would just have a party already to announce to the world that we're having sex, then it wouldn't be sin anymore, but I can't really wrap my mind around that one these days. (Can't I just tell you all one at a time??) But seriously, those additions to my friends list always brings up the same questions: Do they know I'm not Christian anymore? How would they react? Will they hate me? Will they be (irritatingly) sorry for me, despite my insistence that I like my life? Will they be cool with it? I'm not signing up for another re-conversion attempt here, am I?

And that's not fun. So I'm quietly culling the list, deleting information from my profile, and using it less and less.

Labels: data-mining, facebook, past