An Ode to Facebook

Facebook and I hit freshman year at the same time. I was awkward and eighteen, Facebook was unpolished and geeky. The both of us were insular, too; that year neither of us stretched our horizons any farther than the main campus drag. But Facebook, with all its growing pains, opened up a whole new world for me, myself, and I. Facebook showed me that there were people out there, hanging out and probably drinking or doing some other unspeakable act with enthusiastic debauchery, living only a few hundred yards away from my adopted library nook. Facebook showed me that even if I wasn’t pretty, even if I wasn’t an extrovert, I could still stalk people with wild abandon.

I got to be beyond awesome at stalking. Facebook stalking, in particular, but also Internet stalking, in general. Everyone, except maybe the people who were geekier than I will ever be, seemed to be under the impression that if you called yourself Lissa M on Facebook, you could safely post party pics and live like you weren’t actually a quality candidate in Early Childhood Education by day. Not so, not so. I could still find you, your friends, your mother, your old Xanga account, your friends, your best friends, your teaching portfolio, your home address, your phone number, your poor choices written up in the police reports section of your hometown newspaper, your rabid animal rights activism, and, if you were really extra dumb, your social security number. I’m talking about you, Alyssa Marie Lincoln, you sophomore Psychology and Early Childhood Education double major, you. Not that I’d actually do anything with that information, because I’m not actually into white-collar crime all that much, just cold cases and missing persons. But I would continue to stalk that halter top you wore to last night’s Delta Gam extravaganza.

I guess I just liked looking at all the pretty people and imagining I was prettier than I actually was. Online beauty contests could be pretty harsh, though. Hott Babe and her Hott Babe Friends would always take those facial recognition tests and post them on their secured and private Facebook walls so everyone in the world could gasp at their beauty and their remarkable resemblance to a very young Jennifer Aniston. I loved looking at those things, until I took one myself.

ALYSSA has a 75% resemblance to JENNIFER ANISTON from FRIENDS! Which FAMOUS PERSON do YOU look like? CLICK HERE to find out NOW!

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PLEASE UPLOAD A RECENT PICTURE. ALL PICTURES SHOULD BE FULL FACE SHOTS. CROP OUT EVERYTHING ELSE.

Upload.

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YOU HAVE UPLOADED GRACEGOODPICTURENODOUBLECHIN.JPG. ARE YOU READY TO FIND OUT WHICH FAMOUS PERSON YOU LOOK LIKE? CLICK TO FIND OUT!

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CONGRATULATIONS! GRACE has a 93% resemblance to KIM JONG IL from NORTH KOREA! CLICK to POST ON FACEBOOK! SHARE with your FRIENDS! WHAT FAMOUS PEOPLE WILL THEY LOOK LIKE?

Sob.

Like beep I was going to share my results on Facebook. First, Alyssa would know I was stalking her, and since she didn’t actually know who I was, she could be freaked out and call campus police, and since her dad was a lawyer in Connecticut, that could turn out bad. And the painful truth was that I did kinda look like Kim Jong Il. We both had terrifying massive foreheads of doom. We both spent time thinking about killing people. Of course, Kim Jong Il actually thought about killing people and then he actually actually killed people, while I occasionally read the library copy of the Journal of Genocide Studies before I grabbed some lunch. But I didn’t need anybody else noticing that I looked like an evil dictator. Whatever cred I got from being hott enough to take the Famous Person Look-A-Like Quiz in the first place would be totally shot. Oh, and no pun intended, really, because North Korea is so mysterious that nobody seems to know Kim Jong Il’s preferred method for taking somebody out.

Yep, Facebook was the ultimate stalking tool. Facebook was also the world’s largest beauty contest, most competitive popularity contest, and the most painful gargantuan reality slap in the face of all of us who were awkward, wore Army-issue BDUs unironically, and were named Grace. I’m sure Facebook was that harsh to all the other not pretty people out there drowning in online anonymity, but I’m narcissistic so I’m just going to pretend that those fakers don’t really exist. Facebook was all about displaying the me, and when your self-concept relied on the buoyant accolades of shut-ins who thought you were the best Halo player in the clan, your Facebook me was made of suck and fail.

There were all the profile pictures of the hott people on the evening prowl, probably tipsy but wholly perfect, smiling wide, cropped strategically so you knew that they were out on the town with the girls, not drinking alone down at the club taking sad selfies. There were the profile pictures of the hottness on a European jaunt with some mega-castle carefully crafted by French proto-engineers in the background being so hott that you didn’t know what was more perfect: the historically accurate use of fleur-de-lis motifs on the castle or the red knit scarf that highlighted those cheekbones so precisely. There were the profile pictures of skinny people in Forever 21 peplum dresses that flattered and enhanced the figure. There were the profile pictures of hott people doing wacky things, like holding up bags of no-name candy in the toilet paper aisle at Walmart, because Walmart is wacky and for fat people, while the rest of us shop at Target and drop a couple hundred bucks on things we don’t really need, but at least we can post Relatable Facts on Pinterest about dropping a couple hundred bucks at Target on things we don’t really need every. time. we. go. The profile pictures made me sad, because my profile picture was the most flattering picture that had ever been taken and which was snapped while I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip with no friends around.

The years passed. I aged. Alyssa aged. Facebook expanded and became increasingly evil. Everybody complained that Facebook was so evil that it was almost as bad as Walmart, except that Walmart didn’t take as much data on your relationship status, but everybody still used Facebook anyway. The personality quizzes kept coming, the Farmville animals multiplied, and everybody grumbled about unwanted app requests. My profile pictures gradually improved . Finally, I could upload a picture of Dan and I hanging out on a Friday night, use the crop tool to zoom in my smiling face, and pretend to my friend list that perhaps, slightly to the right of my shoulder, I had cropped out an actual friend that I was hanging out with, not just my husband, who was boring and not one of the girls. My Facebook was still sad, but at least I could look at my 227 friends and smile. I, unlike Alyssa, actually knew each of my friends in real life, and I knew Alyssa didn’t know each of her 1,089 friends, because each time she added someone new they’d post on her wall and ask her who she was.

Time smiled sweetly upon me. I still don’t have many friends I can crop out of pictures, but my hair looks better and I occasionally don’t have a double chin in my selfies. I just needed my time to grow into my own, to grow into Facebook. I, unlike Alyssa, who posts statuses so banal that she might as well tell the world she’s currently pooping on the potty because it’d be a little more enthralling, have pithy statuses that say something insightful about the public education system. I also use good grammar, make people laugh, and don’t use hearts, random capital letters in the middle of words, and never, ever parrrrtay. I am a bit of an oddball and I use Facebook. And I am proud.

But I still can’t help but stalk Alyssa. I can’t help it. Some sadistic urge from deep within compels me to check her Facebook page every two weeks and see what she’s doing with her life, and thus what I’m not doing with my life. Comparing our online photo albums is enough to put me into a depressive funk for wouldn’t you like to know how much time.

First, there’s the engagement album. Lots of pictures of Alyssa and her incredibly hot fiancée holding hands in the fall with golden leaves and wooden fences and abandoned railroad ties copyrighted by Ashley May Photography. My engagement pictures were taken by a sullen hourly teenager at JCPenney. The photographer took pains to spotlight my dictator forehead in each and every picture, which my in-laws then insisted on putting on a repeating loop on their big-screen TV whenever they had guests over.

Then, there’s the wedding album. Lots of pictures of Alyssa and her hott bridesmaids wearing sunglasses being Charlie’s Angels. Lots of pictures of the country-style reception, which was held outside on a beautiful June day. Lots of pictures of prime rib with au jus and cocktails. My wedding flowers were from BJs and I made all my own menu cards. Our cake was lopsided because the baker couldn’t figure out how to stack three squares on top of each other. Most of my pictures feature my Pennsylvania relatives freaking out at the Chinese food and sticking fried chicken heads at the camera.

And then there were all the pictures of Alyssa and Hot Husband’s new place. They moved into an actual house after the nuptials, because Hot Husband made $90,000 a year and could afford it. Lots of pictures of energy-inefficient cathedral ceilings and mint and grey accent pillows. After we got married, we moved into a $700-a-month one bedroom which was nice enough, except for all the blood and hair in the freezer which maintenance explained was left behind from the previous tenant’s tenure. And except for that one time the bathroom wall collapsed in the middle of the night. Also, our upstairs neighbor insisted on vacuuming his 700 square feet once every 24 hours, precisely at 1 AM. Alyssa had a wine cellar and Jack-and-Jill sinks. I kept waiting for maintenance to discover poor Pundalik Patel buried under our apartment, dead and possibly mummified.

I guess I’ll never have that ideal Facebook page like Alyssa. I mean, I live in a cookie-cutter house down the street from a bar and an apartment complex, and you just know some kid would chuck his lunch on $300 of Sri-Lankan slave labor jammed into my hypothetical Coach bag. Until I’m as cool as Alyssa, I must find comfort in our bearable school tax rate and a mere $50 of Sri-Lankan slave labor jammed into my 100% natural man-made imitation leather Jessica Simpson bag. And if I ever get really depressed, I can just walk four blocks down our street and enjoy my cheap, noisy, not-cul-de-sac friendly neighborhood bar. It’d be a visit sans croppable friends, but hey, it’s a martini, just like the one I saw in Alyssa’s photograph from March 27, 2013, with three friends, celebrating her thirtieth birthday, having the time of her life.