With Friends Like These ...

Once again, this week I've been thinking about the nature of the Facebook Friend. I'm almost embarrassed to sound like a 15-year-old girl (or would that be an 18-year-old, since the 15-year-olds are all on myspace?) to waste time thinking about this, but what's the point of the whole Facebook friend thing if your 'friends' aren't really friends in the first place or if they turn on you because of the toxic political environment we're immersed in these days?

I've already had one big huge blowup with a former (real) friend who became my Facebook friend but whose political rants (e.g., 'it's raining out today, i guess the messiah obama could not make the sun shine 24 hours a day!') got to be absurd and tiresome and whose hatred of our President was so deep and intense that she became a vile, hateful, ugly person on my facebook page. Not only did I knock her off my page but I never want to see or hear anything about her ever again.

She had a pal who is also a Facebook friend of mine who also is a part of the whole teabagger, 'there's Marxists running amok in the hall of the White House!' types, but I have not kicked him off my FB page because he isn't that 24 hours a day -- maybe like 20, but not 24 hours a day. He also posts things related to street fairs he's going to or where he's biking or running and he can comment on say, a goofy news story or something I post without resorting to blaming Obama.

But then there are still people such as the guy I went to grammar school with, who I last saw I think in 7th grade, who 'friended' me, wrote me maybe one note that said hello and urged me to read Ayn Rand, but after a while the only time he'd check in with me would be to criticize something I said or to LOL at me and the rest of the liberals. The last thing he posted on my page began with "You liberals make me laugh," called me some sort of a hypocrite and it really bugged me, because I'm like, 'why the f should i care what some guy i haven't even seen in person for like 30 years says to me, not even to my face?' Then there's the guy who I'm not even sure if I've ever said anything to, who may have been a member of the same group of youngish Italians I was in awhile back, who has commented on my page maybe three times, and each time has been to counter something I've said about the need for healthcare insurance reform, or to rebut some assertion I made that illustrated how backwards and ridiculous Republicans have become in the past few years. It's one thing to disagree with me and say so, but if that's the only thing you do -- if you don't even click on the 'like' button when i post a picture of cute puppies or a grammar school choir singing Beyonce songs, why are you even here? Do you actually consider me a 'friend?' because I surely don't think you're acting like one.

Then there's the guy who posted hateful, spiteful things on the Steve and Johnnie Show FB page, and when I made a witty comment about how he's more obsessed with the WGN latenight radio duo than any of their actual fans, he took the time to go to my FB page, read my info, then go back to the Steve and Johnnie page and tell me I was stupid and he hoped I lose my job at the Sun-Times. He was soon thereafter kicked off the Steve and Johnnie show page, but he seems to have revisited them on Monday night, only this time he created a fake FB profile that was very close to theirs -- something like "Steve _ Johnnie _ Show," copied a picture of them for the public picture and then went onto their real page and acting as if he was them, said "Our show has been cancelled." Yeah, what a prick.

What drives people to be like this? If someone actually does not like you, and can't stand to hear you say something without telling you how stupid it is and how deluded you are, are they your 'friend'? If they only say something to you when you've said something they don't like, are they your 'friend'? If people who are your Facebook friends did anything in the 'real' world like what they did on Facebook, would they be your friends? Would they be arrested? Would they be shunned by all good, decent people? If people really need to say something, they should get a blog. It's free, and they can say whatever they want. And they can stay the hell away from me.