Facebook.com and I are on the rocks this Valentine’s day – I’m tired of being played like a fiddle every time Facebook sends me another ridiculous and unwanted application invitation.
This is the first Feb. 14 in three years that Facebook and I will be apart. I don’t know what to do. With my luck, I’ll probably end up at Hooters with my other friends celebrating Single’s Awareness Day.
And that’s cool.
I’ll be sad, and Facebook will be with the millions of other sad saps who think virtual love beats the real thing.
I know this is sudden, and many of my readers will recall all the good times I’ve had with Facebook. But I’m just tired of settling for a sub-par cyber relationship with a social network that only cares about how much I click and poke before collapsing in my executive computer chair, spent and nursing a sprained right hand.
Looking back at this past semester, it’s easy to see I wrote with the passion of a man madly in love with the Internet itself – columns praising Facebook’s applications and Internet connectivity written with the knowledge that slender arguments come from slim hips.
I was a fool.
My love of Facebook wasn’t real: it was convenient and cheap.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve had a blast over the past three years. There was laughter, there were tears and life lessons were learned by all.
And don’t think I’m denigrating what Facebook has meant to me in the past.
I’m not bitter.
I treasure the countless memories of sitting up until 2:00 a.m. obsessively refreshing my News Feed to see what my other friends have been up to while I was glued to my computer screen, drinking alone and trying to convince myself that a vibrant Internet presence is every bit as good as being popular in real life.
And I still believe that. I really do.
And I don’t want to say Facebook made me want to be a better person – that would be trite and maudlin, as well as shamelessly derivative.
But Facebook certainly made me much more aware of the way I present myself to the world around me. I now know how important my taste in film, music and obscure quotations are, and it’s all because of Facebook.
But I believe relationships are like sharks – if they’re not moving forward, they’re dead.
And I think what I have on my hands here is a dead shark.
I’m a pretty giving boyfriend, truth be told. I’ve accepted all the curves my monogamous Internet relationship with everyone’s favorite social networking site has thrown at me – the tiresome addition of applications, the invasive-yet-compulsively-readable News Feed, My Lil Lohan – all in the spirit they were given.
But there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark, folks, and this Valentine’s day, I’ve reached my breaking point – Facebook’s a clingy nut job, and I feel like I don’t have to take it any more.
If I get one more stupid notification, I’m going to rend my clothes and collapse in rage.
I’ve talked to my therapist about this, and he agrees Facebook’s gone too far – and after 10 years of therapy, my therapist assures me that I’m a normal man.
Just like all of you, I’m a screwed-up kid with a suitcase full of dreams looking for love in all the wrong places.
But these notifications have me mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.
Guys, how many times has your significant other sent you countless text messages about nonsense you could care less about – workplace politics, sorority drama or Bogie’s graffiti slurring your lover and all of her friends as dirty hippies?
Well, that’s what these notifications have been doing to me.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of Facebook’s constant attempts to get my attention through ridiculous application invitations begging me to spend yet another pointless five minutes denying whatever it is that Facebook thinks I suddenly care about.
I’m sick of it, and this Valentine’s day I want one night without this nonsense – no invitations to get a virtual drink, no more requests to be on a wagon team in the new Oregon Trail application, no pokes and no anything else.
Facebook and I are on a break.
Valentine’s day, for me, is the first day of the rest of my life. And I intend to live large.
I’m not saying I’ll never see Facebook again – I doubt I’ll ever truly leave it behind. But from now on, I’ll be a lot more careful about my social networking Web sites.
I’m thinking I should give Myspace.com another try – I’ve already got a friend request from a redhead named Shelbi who claims I remind her of her dead boyfriend. When I messaged her, she invited me to talk to her via her webcam.
I’m going to accept – after Facebook, it’s time for something real.
And there’s nothing more real than MySpace.
—-Visit Neal Hebert on MySpace at myspace.com/lessthanpleased