Anna Hates Facebook

Sure, there are things we all love about Facebook. It keeps me busy at work, for example, and allows me to keep tabs on people I knew in high school who have since gotten fat. It’s like people watching, except instead of the general populace, I am able to thoroughly judge people I actually – or at least vaguely – know.

But really, Facebook, I have to draw the line somewhere, and it’s here: at the fourth degree of separation that you have suddenly decided to bring to my attention via a “People You May Know” feature on my sidebar, right under the birthdays I will not be celebrating, the events I don’t care about and will not be attending, the decidedly unfunny, uninteresting and more often than not grammatically incorrect status updates, and the literally 28 other requests I have been ignoring as they are completely irrelevant to my life (though I’m sure you’re all dying to know if I were a drug, just what drug I’d be, how fast I can type and whether or not I support an end to the Cuban embargo).

What the hell, Facebook? If I cared about the whereabouts of my high school boyfriend’s little sister’s annoying best friend, my fondest memory of whom was four years ago, when she told on me to the Genius Bar at the Apple store after I flirted with the guy next to me so that my dad and I could take his position in the two-hour queue, I would have Facebook-stalked her on my own long ago, and without your encouragement to do so. But she’s annoying, and I have never spoken to her, so I didn’t.

It turns out, Facebook, the three people you have chosen to highlight as people I may know based upon my already established Facebook clan o’ friends are either complete strangers, or I do know those people. And like my aforementioned high school boyfriend’s little sister’s best friend, that guy from my German class, and the girl I may have played soccer with but I can’t quite remember, most of them are annoying. And I certainly don’t care enough about any of them either to have previously asked them to justify my existence by accepting me as a Facebook friend, have them featured prominently on my sidebar, or – horror of horrors – actually call them to get together for a drink and find out through an actual face-to-face conversation what they have been doing since I last saw them three to seven years ago. I don’t care! And I am offended, Facebook, at your suggestion that I do, or should.

In fact, I’d boycott you entirely, but then how would I ever know that that girl in my freshman seminar had a baby, someone I studied abroad with married that skeezy Mexican man she was dating, and holy shit, that guy is still alive?!