We’ve all been there. Like a naiad springing out of an edenic, fauna-strewn brook babbling down a sun-splattered mountainside in order to divert your destiny from its current path, a friend request pops up. You don’t know him personally, but you see that you have at least five friends in common, and depending on who those friends are and in what circles they run, you glean as much information as you can from what he allows to be public on facebook.
The plot thickens.
You ask your friends in common about this guy, what his story is, why he’s contacting you. They say he saw your profile linked in one of their pics, liked your profile pic, and asked about you. Then a message from him appears. “Hey, ——- said you were pretty rad. I dig your book selections. Let me know if you’d like to get a beer sometime.” So you friend him, but you place him on one of your limited viewing lists, aptly titled “No Seeski.” You’re cautious, after all.
Brief conversations ensue. He forwards you an NPR article he thinks you’d like. You give him some recommendations for bars in his neighborhood. You decide to become friends. After scouring over his profile with eyes of steel wool (followed by a thorough Google search/GIS), you acquiesce. There’s a possibility there.
The anticipation mounts. You look forward to each other’s messages. He leaves sarcastic comments on your status updates, and he Likes a photo of you traveling through Mexico last summer. You link a Jon Stewart clip to his Wall, and he loves it. That’s it. It’s time to meet. Pick a spot, shave your legs, tell your friends and let them idealize the outcome (and let your cynical brain believe them for the time being), and show up confident and optimistic.
And then this happens.
You knew you shouldn’t have skipped the obvious red flag that he didn’t know what a naiad is. And that he listed “Fast and the Furious” as one of his favorite movies and supports Ron Paul.
***
We’ve gotten into discussions about this in class many times before, and I was explaining it to one of my 17U volleyball players last night before practice as she was talking about how hard it was for her to focus in class. Because the generation that is just entering college this year has no knowledge of what the world was like before the Interwebz (and has collectively had cell phones since it was about 10, and has access to 500 TV channels at once, etc.), it wants instant gratification in the classroom, needs to be constantly multitasking, and easily loses focus on what is being taught. So while it has 1500 friends on facebook, half of whom are people they’ve never met who probably live on the other side of the planet, it doesn’t have the communication skills to shake hands with a neighbor, talk to someone face-to-face, or communicate properly. Which then rolls over into the classroom, the workplace, and society.
Who needs to subscribe to a dating website when you have facebook for free? I’m sure the success rate is pretty similar.
Oh, world. You just get kookier and kookier with every passing year.
