On Campus

Playing tag on Facebook

What the hell does that mean?

I’m officially a Facebook expert.

In the past few weeks, my Friend List has quadrupled in length. Meaning, I now have eight friends. Uh, including my brother. And my cousin. My aunt Diana. And my mom.

I’ve had a Facebook account for about a year now, and initially I could count all my friends on one hand.

At one point, I could count them all on one finger.

And that one friend? She closed her account. When I clicked on my name, it would say, “Scott Dobson-Mitchell has no friends.”

It was like Facebook was calling me a loser.

Of course, there is an advantage to having only eight friends on Facebook: catching up with everyone takes about 2 seconds.

I was kind of intimidated, even in awe, when I saw how many friends other people have. The more friends you have, the more popular you are, right? One person I noticed has 289 friends. My Aunt Diana has over 400. Another person has 758 friends.

Which is 750 more than I have.

Facebook has taught me something about myself. I’m even worse with computers than I thought I was. I’m not one of those people who can intuitively figure out a new program or website, mastering all the intricate subtleties and maximizing my efficiency within minutes.

According to my Facebook page, I graduated from a high school in Vermont. In 1982. I’m not sure where I went wrong. And I don’t know how to fix it.

The problem is, there are too many options. I can send someone a message. Or share a comment. Or post on my wall. Or post on their wall. Or give status updates.

And apparently I’ve been tagged.

Does that mean I’m IT?

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