Facebook Freaks Me Out

One time many years ago I took it upon myself to organize a bunch of old pictures that Mark had in shoeboxes (probably not literally shoeboxes, but you get the idea). Most of them were from Dad's childhood, or Mom's, but eventually I unearthed a strata of late-'70s-early-'80s photos of our family. I showed one to Mark: it was us and our cousins sitting around the dining table at Camp. Mark was sporting a Peter Frampton afro and grinning like the world was his oyster.

"I hate pictures," he said.

Now I get it. Or at least, sort of.

Fucking Facebook.

I want to use Facebook to stay in touch with those people whom I love but who I never talk to. My cousins, as a for instance. But then I log in and get hit with a friend invite from Eamon Lee, someone whose name is only very vaguely familiar. Was he that weird little kid from up the street, whose sister I kind of liked? When I was eight? Who the hell knows! It's the only Eamon I've ever had any contact with, so it seems pretty likely. So I click on his profile and get this photo of some world-weary chef -- goatee, crowsfeet, paunch. What the fuck?

Or follow the link for the Christian Brothers Academy Class of 1988 and find all these names attached to faces. The name -- Kirk Coyle? -- rings some faint bell and the face is like the image from a dream: the fatter, redder, hairier version of some kid I apparently spent four years with a long time ago. Nothing against Kirk Coyle or any of the others. I'm not exactly 16, either. It's not that we're middle-aged. Middle-aged is fine. It's that from my point of view, they aged from 16 to 40 in an instant, like a vampire dragged out of its coffin into the sun, withering and turning to blowing ash in the time it takes for the second hand to make its circuit around the watchface.

Perhaps this whole social networking thing is better left to the kids, who can grow up with it. If I had seen Kirk Coyle's profile picture change gradually over the years, as he sailed serenely into decrepitude, it would have softened the blow.