friends and fauxs

This morning, as I stared at a photograph of my Facebook friend’s children in blackface, I found myself wondering just who in the sam hell these “friends” of mine are, anyway.


Click to enlarge.

I took this in with at least three layers of incredulity.

1. These children think that painting their faces black makes them spies? Sounds fishy, but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt so I can bear to carry on living.
2. My Facebook friend, an adult, thought it was okay—nay, hilarious—to post this picture of her children in blackface on Facebook? Seriously?
3. RE: all the LOLs and the person who thought it was “clever” in the comment thread—are they really that racist or just unfathomably stupid? And which is worse?

For all of Facebook’s little delights, it is a marvel that I spend so much time on a website where I have to restrain myself from typing YOU ARE A NIGHTMARE AND I WISH YOU ILL so many times a day. For example, in addition to the blackface pics, that same session on FB yielded the following:

• High school classmate’s note on “saving the unborn”
• High school classmate’s photo album dedicated to proving how much her small daughter looks like Shiloh Pitt (number of photos in album: 82)
• An inspirational quote from high school classmate’s yoga teacher
• Extensive status updates RE: high school classmate’s decision to dreadlock her hair

One of the most active people on my Facebook feed is my retarded high school classmate. I don’t wish him ill or anything, but I do find some of his posts sort of puzzling. Most of them revolve around high school basketball games and some TV show called America’s Dirtiest Jobs, but today I guess he has been feeling philisophical:

question of the day-- if beef comes from cows & rabbits eat carrots then what animal is most connected to potatoes??

I know he’s retarded and all, but what does that MEAN?

This is all to say that the different ways in which people connect on Facebook is interesting to me. I think some people create profiles just to monitor when they’re tagged in pictures. Others use it to collect and catalog acquaintances like they’re filling an imaginary case with popularity trophies. Some people restrict their networks to friends they actually know and like.

And then there’s me. I am a sort of weird hybrid user, I guess, in that I really like Facebook a lot—and actively use it—yet I’m pretty lackadaisical about seeking people out to friend. As a result, my FB kingdom consists mostly of high school classmates who I wasn’t really friends with ever, much less now.

Sometimes I like imagining what these people, in turn, think of the things I post. What might they make, for example, of the pictures I posted from my recent trip to the suburbs, which show me and my mean-spirited friends posing with the ridiculous house deejay at an arcade? Do they pray for me when I post about being hospital drunk?

Then, of course, there’s this. I think I'm gonna get meta and post it on FB as a little experiment.