DOES YOUR FACEBOOK FIT?

(First written August 2007)

In the past few weeks, I have discovered a new addiction. It’s harmless enough, as these things go – it’s not going to enhance my athletic prowess, alter my blood count or accelerate my heart rate. There is, though, a chance that it might keep me awake at night. It’s a website and a global phenomenon: www.facebook.com.

I discovered this seemingly harmless site while listening to the Gerry Ryan show on 2fm, when I heard it described as “kind of like bebo for grown-ups”. Most people are aware of bebo by now – the young enjoying it as a provider of online gossip, the old despairing of it as, well, a provider of online gossip. Facebook is a more discreet variant – you can control who sees your profile, and allow only people you recognise to read what you post on your page. It’s an adult site – not in the sinister sense of that word, but in the sense that it’s based on alumni of various schools and colleges, as opposed to those currently studying there. To allude to another well-known website, it’s basically Friends Reunited with gimmicks: gimmicks like virtual aquariums, virtual drinks, message boards and hundreds upon hundreds of clubs you can join.

Out of sheer curiosity, I signed up for this online extravaganza of trivia about 3 weeks ago. I duly signed up as a past pupil of this school and that university, and so began a frenetic joining of clubs: from the Daniel Corbett Appreciation Society to the Lost in Translation Speaks To Me club via the Reading Is Sexy book club. Through hours of investigation worthy of Inspectors Morse and Lewis, I tracked down several friends from university, school and various other groups of which I had, years ago, been a member. Messages were exchanged. I reacted with surprise and some pleasure to be remembered by these people after so many years. It felt good – I felt accepted.

Soon it said on my profile that I had sixteen friends. I’m not sure whether I’ve ever in my life been able to boast of having sixteen friends. Acquaintances, certainly – but friends? Real, proper, friends – people on whom I can rely, people who might rely on me? That was certainly a novelty. Once again – I felt accepted, and this is the crux of Facebook: I felt accepted in a way in which I certainly didn’t when I was actually at school with some of these people. In those days, I was “that quiet girl in the back row who read a lot, and who could be a bit sarcastic when you least expected it” – not at all Ms Popular with friends well into double figures. This was great – really great – but it got me thinking: did I really struggle to “fit in” all those years ago, or was I actually much more accepted and liked than I realised at the time?

Before long, though, the novelty of hearing from me wore off on some of my sixteen friends. The messages slowed down. The cute little pictures, the virtual gifts of fish for my imaginary aquarium, the film and book recommendations and the song dedications… the flurry of initial interest thinned to a light sprinkling of messages. From receiving up to twelve “new notifications” a day in the beginning, after a few weeks, days could pass with not a word at all. I began to feel paranoid. Was it something I said? Did my face(book) not fit after all? Did they not want to be my friends any more?

And that’s the thing about Facebook. As you sit, coffee-fuelled, at your computer as your room grows dark and cold around you, long into the summer evening, you’re plunged back into all the uncertainties and insecurities of growing up. That uncertainty of the placing of your feet – have you offended? Do you fit in? Are you normal, cool, popular? Would you get invited to a party, or would the cool kids wait until you weren’t around to discuss their weekend plans? Are your sixteen friends secretly exchanging messages about you, about just how totally tragic you still are?

Ghosts from the past are every bit as scary when you meet them online as they might be in an eerie midnight graveyard. The virtual handshake across a gulf of time, the witty catch-up e-mail, the nostalgic smile at photographs hinting at illusions lost and a wrinkle or two gained – all these things are life-affirming, and a confirmation of so many years well spent. And yet they also remind us that, although all those magic potions we can buy from No7 or Clinique or L’Oreal may hide the laughter lines or greying hair, we’re all still every bit as vulnerable as we were all those years ago: back when we thought we knew it all.

19-08-07