Facebook...what did I do with all my free time before you?

This Facebook thing is pretty interesting. If you aren't on it, your'e pretty much out of the loop on the biggest craze since the Crackberry. A month ago hardly anyone was on it, and now you're a total loser if you aren't on it. I'm hearing from people I haven't laid eyes on since high school.

Its addictive, and alot of fun because everyone else is also addicted and they keep it up to date. I'm sure more than one workplace is going to shut it down because people are on it all of the time.

A bunch of years ago, I guess what people did was have chit chats at the grocery store or spread the gossip around over the backyard fence and you saw people on Sunday at church, so you had a natural outlet to see who was getting fat (are they pregnant or just hitting the Hagan Daaz?), who was going bald and who you wanted to kick because they looked too perfect all of the time.
Not everyone you met on the street or had a polite chit chat made the Christmas card list, but you were still interested in their news and they in yours. And sometimes you'd run into people you and just say 'C'mon over on Saturday, bring the kids!" and it wasn't a big deal.

But we don't all live in the same place like the old days and I suspect that even if we did people just don't have the time to connect. So this is seems to be replacing the old "hey how's it going? that you would naturally encounter in every day life if you lived in the same little town and knew everyone.

I can go for weeks in Ottawa and not run into someone I know. I'm always shocked when I do and I'm beyond expecting to see people I know. I think my Dad would hate that. My Dad walks 10 paces down the Mayflower Mall in Sydney and before he gets from the Wal Mart to the Suzy Sheir, he's got 3 new sign orders, found out the medical status of half the north end and has someone coming over Wednesday to look at why the lawn isn't thriving.

This gives me hope. It means that people still want to connect with one another. Face to face got replaced by the phone, the phone got replaced by email and we lost something, because in phone and email, you had to have a 'reason' to 'dial' the phone or fire off an email. Now you can just post 'this is what I did / am interested / wish today' and everyone can see and respond. And you can see what other people are up to and make a snappy, timely comment and cheer them on or validate their bad day without it being a big thing. No big whoop. Mostly I think that everyone assumes that everyone else is busy doing something more exciting than talking to you. Clearly with the amount of time everyone is spending on this and how much people seem to be enjoying it, everyone is watching a little less American Idol (or googling less medical conditions at work) and connecting again.