Facebook Phenomenon

Two years ago I created a fake facebook account under the name Barbara Scottch because I wanted to view my little brother's pictures. I was amazed that even with a fake name and birthday and no pictures SOMEHOW two people knew it was me and requested to be my friend. I had no interest or need for facebook and I never logged in again.

Over the past few months my friend Carolyn has been peer pressuring me to use facebook. She and the other mums in the area organize all the playdates with facebook and wouldn't always remember to email me. I really had no interest in maintaining or using a facebook account so I didn't give into her peer pressure.

Yesterday at 3:30AM while I was feeding Spencer, I logged into my facebook account. Maybe it was the lack of sleep but I had decided to change my account from being fake to being real. I finally accepted the two friend request I had received ages before and was feeling good about the prospect of being "in the loop" with the other mums.

Shortly thereafter, around 4:30AM, I went to bed. When I woke up two hours later, again with Spencer, I was shocked to see I had 5 email notifications of people wanting to be my friend on facebook. I laughed to myself, accepted all the requests, and spent a few minutes looking at everyone's pages.

A few hours later I got more emails and more requests, and then more and more-all day, every time I went to the computer I had another facebook friend request. It is now a full 24 hours since I changed my account and I have 21 friends on facebook. It is exciting to see some of the names and faces of people I grew up with and haven't seen or talked to in years...but at the same time, I am still not interested in MAINTAINING and ACTIVELY USING facebook. It is too much time and effort. I cant see myself logging in every few hours to update my status and comment on my friends' statuses.

I am afraid that I will be a disappointment to my facebook friends....I'll try my best but I don't think I'll live up to the facebook standard that has been set for me. I'm sure I'll login several times a day, everyday or every other day, for the next few weeks...but it is only a matter of time when that frequency becomes once a week and then later once every few months. At least-that is the trend with my myspace account. Sigh, I guess I'm not a good social networker.

But in the meantime I am going to enjoy my popularity-I never knew I had so many friends. And despite what some of you may think (Jade), I didn't create this post to announce that I have a facebook account so that more people will look me up and friend me, although I am sure that will be a nice consequence for my actions.