Vendredi V - Big Brother is Watching Edition

I have a grand total of one Facebook friend. This is astonishing to me.

Not that I am astonished that I have only one friend. But that I have a friend at all.

See, I've been suspicious of The Facebook since I first heard about it. Initially dismissing it as a flash in the pan, I then determined to wait it (along with its MySpace and Twitter ilk) out, only to discover that I've been left behind and now must disguise my fear-of-change and inability-to-recognize-important/cool-things-until-its-too-late as an intentional eschewing of this clear and present danger.

What little I've seen of it actually looks okay. I say "little" because, having ignored pretty much all the invitations I've received to friend someone [aside: "friend" as a verb? Seriously?], I think I can't see anyone's site. I tried to look at my mom's, but I think I was barred. Besides, I'm pretty sure hers is solely for the purpose of chatting with her friends (hi Margaret!) and bragging about her grandchildren.

So, only one friend, and this was because I was trying to track down someone in Australia. (Who, I must add, has a lovely Facebook site and was reason enough to get an account, even though I've never been back to update my own page since I found her.)

Since then, no participation. Which is why I was somewhat surprised to get an email from Facebook last week advising me that I had a message.

Overcome by curiosity, I checked out said message, only to discover it was an old one from last summer - someone whom we shall call "Floral F" - no wait, too obvious - "F. Fern" - mocking me for having only one friend. Not sure why FB decided I needed reminding of this message's existence at this point.

But while I was there, I was shocked (SHOCKED!) by the little Suggestions section. There, on my bare-bones, no real info page was a list of people that FB thought I might want to add as friends. And know who was on there? PEOPLE I KNOW!

Now I love it when I get suggestions based on feedback I've given. Netflix rocks because it's got us pegged in terms of movies (apparently, we like "Quirky Foreign Thrillers" - who knew that was a category?). But this is because we've carefully rated everything we've watched, and it suggests things based on our preferences.

But how does Facebook know? I've never rated my friends. From where is it obtaining, through nefarious measures, no doubt, the type of people I would like and cross-referencing it - somehow - with people I actually know?

And all this gets added to my pre-existing list of:

Top 5 Reasons Why I Don't Do Facebook:

1. I like my privacy. Every day, it seems, FB gets in trouble with someone over the information it collects and - worse - hangs onto. I'm pretty terrible with fine print, and so like most people, I would assume that my information was my own, only to find out someday that some Nigerian prince obtained my address and driver's license which led to my bank account and an EFT faster than you can say "I have legitimate bank holding that which cannot access but if it would be you could provide a cheque for entirely legal transaction, I would be most pleased to submit to you a cheque to recompense your services, thank you and God bless."

2. I want to keep my job. Stories of Facebook Firings are also rampant. One of the reasons I blog anonymously (ish) is that I don't want my coworkers to find me. Not that there's posts detailing drunken escapades or talking trash about my work here on PGT. But I like a neater divide between personal and public. (Yeah, I know there's ways to limit access to parts of your FB page. But there's that "can't read the fine print" stuff - I'd mess it up and give everybody access to everything.)

3. I am cripplingly polite. Given a tendency towards conflict-avoidance and a not-insubstantial dose of hesitancy in the self-esteem area, I tend to be nice to everyone for fear of reprisal. Add to this a ripe guilt complex that leads to agonized moments of "what if something I said offended them?!" and you have someone who could not possibly say no to a friend request. And what if I don't want to be their friend? What if we fell out of touch after high school and I'm of the opinion that's a good thing?

4. I am lazy. As you have possibly noticed, I have enough trouble keeping up with this blog. If I had to keep up some sort of status, it would probably still read something like "Moving to Mpls - Excited and Scared - Hope it Works Out!!!!" and my profile picture would still have the blond highlights circa 2004.

5. I am scared my page will suck. And, here we have the real reason why I don't join FB. This corner of the blogosphere is anonymous, and the people who know it's me are more likely to look upon its deficiencies with a kind eye. Facebook? You're out there...anyone who finds you knows it's you and that you have a sucky page. Also - what if no one wants to be my friend because my page is so sucky? Also again - what if some of my friends take pity on me and friend me, but then their friends find out they're friends with me and say, "ewww - you're friends with the girl with the suckiest page that ever sucked?" and then they (my friends) get de-friended (by their friends) and then it's all "oh PM, your stupid sucky page screwed up Facebook."