Facebook is a voyeur's wet dream. All these uncurtained, giant bay windows bearing witness to the common people's daily lives. Free access to their most intimate moments and relationships. It is a compilation of the lion's share of mundane and prosaic drivel muddled with a gross quantity of infuriating blather (political, racist and sexist) designed to incense and aggravate even the most pronounced Buddhist.
And yet - as a self-professed and admitted people watcher - it's the digital, modern-day version of rubbernecking. I should preface this by saying, I have a large number of people, from
all over the world, on my Facebook account that I don't know personally.
Occasionally, for entertainment, I just read through my feed of status updates.
Iris has announced publicly this morning, "Im so DONE with my friggin family! U people need to mind your own damn busines!!!!!! Im a grown woman and I can do what i want and i dont need your permission. Why dont you just <expletive>!"
Okay, admittedly, she lost me at the first word. I had to re-read it four time to grasp the content. I understand venting as much as the next person, but I don't understand poor grammar and punctuation - that's simply unacceptable chaos. (Admittedly, I am a Language Arts snob.) Her profile picture was taken in her bathroom mirror - a young woman in a cropped, see-through neon yellow top, black push-up bra and imitation Catholic school wannabe miniskirt, a faux pout that would make a cichlid envious and flashing scary 'gang signs' from some arbitrary (and no doubt, deadly) gang in the bowels of Northeastern Minnesota. I'm hopeful she still has time to learn next year as Sophomore.
Moving on, Jennifer is selling her ex-boyfriends Mossberg ATR 30-06, Bolt Action, Synthetic stock with Nikon 3x9 Power scope. It's only been fired 10-15 times. It has a camo strap, and she is asking $300 - cash only please.
I'm left wondering what happened to Jennifer's ex, and why it took 10-15 rounds.
Mike has posted, "I anyone has my daughter on FB, i sure would like to talk to her to please let her know i love and miss her."
Oy. Please Mike - go speak to your daughter in person. I'm never sure if the people who post these intentionally ambiguous comments are exhibiting symptoms of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy or is merely desperate.
Two posts from the AmberAlert Facebook group about a sixteen year old and another fourteen year old missing.
These break my heart. Best use of FB to date. My heart is always hopeful for a happy-ending, but my head knows that statistically that is unlikely.
A post from a former culinary school student whining about how 'difficult' an instructor is for expecting them to make 12 different types of pastry - in only FOUR HOURS! Oh, the humanity!
A hilarious thought from one of those unknown people I added to my account: "Your body is a temple, not a drive-through!"
I may need to write that down for Health class for my daughter.
Jet-setting from my office, I occasionally learn something of a different culture. Mateja (from Slovenia) writes, "If you can't handel it, I will. If i won't, then at least I did my best." I can forgive the grammar and spelling issues, since English does not appear to be her first language. Apparently, though, dramatics are universal.
More often than not, I learn that people, worldwide, suffer from the same fears and frustrations, wants, needs and hopes - and Facebook allows us to connect with each other conspire, commiserate and verbally upchuck on our own terms, and for far less than the cost of therapy.
You've got a nicely working rapier here, skewering various follies, always fun for the non-skewered (and in my case, non-FB) to read. By indirection or echo, we find out a little about the writer's personality and what she finds funny, sad, and inbetween--we don't learn a lot, but, yes, we can read between the lines. The closest you come to intentionally pulling the curtain aside is your comment about being a Language Arts fanatic.
ReplyDeleteBut that reticence works here. We sense we are in the presence of someone amused and intrigued and that amusement and intrigue can't help but become the reader's too.
But I think the same thing about this as about 'Patterson.' You can do this stuff and it's good, and you know you can do it, and you like doing it.
But--
What about the writing and the material and the approaches where you're less confident, less safe? Can you do all that too?