they know about the power of greyskull

Recently, my best friend (who was visiting from out of town) chided me about the amount of time I spend on facebook.  Given the amount of time she spends sending and receiving text messages, I'm not sure she's in a place to criticize, but neither can I really object.  There was one day last week when I checked my mobile facebook before I got out of bed.  At the time, it seemed a good excuse to remain sequestered within the coziness for just one more minute...but as it turns out, I may have an addiction.  So, how did this happen?

Far from being a social butterfly with numerous network connections requiring maintenance, I'm perhaps an eremetic tortoise, rarely sticking my nose outside the house unless it's required.  As a younger tortoise, I attempted to channel the butterfly, but I wasn't well-suited to all the flitting about and niceties and obligations.  While a carapace may seem fairly aerodynamic, it's awkward and limits mobility.  It's terribly convenient, however, when one is overstimulated and craves respite.  For the record, I have never gotten carried away with my own analogies.

Facebook is socialization at arm's length.  It enables wall-flowering, permits admiration from afar, and provides a socially acceptable medium for inserting comments at one's comfort level.  It provides a sense of social connection without overwhelming the hypersensitive natures of the un-social.  (I'm not antisocial, per se, just afflicted with a mild allergy for crowds.  Actually, I think it's growing in severity.)  I did not even consider attending my high school reunion last year, but I have enjoyed "friending" some classmates who I haven't seen since graduation.  It turns out they're mostly grown-ups now, too, and we can interact on more even ground than we did as teenagers.  Developmental psychology posits that there is an aspect of human nature that compels us to check in against our cohort group; it seems reasonable that the ideal cohort is the group with which one is locked up to gain one's education.  The most interesting part of facebook reunion-ing was posting a pile of old pictures I'd scanned and tagging former classmates, who then left comments ranging from protestations against adolescent awkwardness to nostalgia to condemnations of the insular environment.  One girl -- er, woman -- commented to the effect of, "if only we'd known the world was so much bigger outside of high school!"  Umm, sweetie?  Those of us who were aware of that fact were just waiting for our release.

 On facebook, a person can have at least a peripheral awareness of the events in the lives of many others, and participate in their updates at a self-selected level.  It's kind of amazing how it creates a common ground amongst people whose lives may have taken disparate paths many years ago.