Then the madness began. I got emails every time anyone touched my page. Michael in Australia posted something on my Wall. Carola in Korea sent me a video (turned out it was a case of mistaken identity). Craig poked and asked if it was good for me (I sent a dirty reply). What next? Sarah picking her nose and pasting it on my FunWall? I wanted out of these hourly interruptions.
Then a friend (a MySpace employee) posted an article explaining that Facebook was tracking all of my roving about and selling it to marketers! So, the nifty little network was taking the chats with those I loved across two oceans and profiting from my actions? Not to mention the applications that tended to freeze up just when I was about to socially climax. I was miffed again. I preferred social networking sites that didn’t have secret intentions or bugs.
I bitched about my woes by status update, and fantasized what it might feel like leaving Facebook and my friends altogether, satisfied that we’d be just as close the next time I saw them in ten years. Then just when I was about to select all my friends and send them my farewell boomerang, Facebook did something remarkable: it wooed me back.
I had decided to research whether cute random Kevin in my Inbox was for real. Kevin belonged to my same network and some intriguing groups. Groups were something I still hadn’t participated in since I had enough real-time groups to keep my calendar occupied.
I noticed that Kevin had joined the Four guys, one destination, one mission: Suicide Prevention group, and when I clicked on the link, I was touched by their story. They had dealt with their friend’s suicide attempt by talking about it with him and pledged the next day to do more with their lives, by cycling from Texas to Alaska once they graduated. I told them how happy I was to see twenty-year-olds banding together, they were the ones who could combat the camouflaged phenomenon of male depression, and then I joined their group.
