Needing A Serious Facebook Lift

[Shebang Re-post]

Okay, so last Monday night I had to go to traffic school. Yep. It was awesome. I was about to enter the room that was already filled with my fellow violators when my cell phone rang. I explained to my friend that I was walking into traffic school and that I’d have to call her back in a couple of hours. Now, my friend has smoked since we were in high school so, before I could say, “Seven miles over the speed limit,” she burst into the loudest, most incredible hacking grandpa-guffaw I have ever heard. It rocked the entire building so there was no way that every human in that echo-chamber of a room didn’t hear it.

After we hung up, I walked into the room and they all looked at me. I knew they heard the call and the laugh, they knew they heard the call and the laugh – and it was freaking hilarious. So, I decided to just be myself and engage my fellow humans. I waved and said, “Hi Guys! Anybody else get that awesome of a reaction about being here?” Oh my God, you should have seen the look of horror on most of their faces. A couple of women gave me half smiles before returning their gaze to the purses clutched tightly on their laps. The men looked as though I had offered them a lap dance in front of their wives. Rather than pursue that thread of humor and tell them not to knock something before they’ve tried it, I decided to sit down, shut up and read Bossypants. At least Tiny Fey would engage me in witty banter.

Seriously, we were all there - on the same planet, in the same country, in the same state, in the same city, in the same building, in the same room, in the same seats, for the same ridiculous reason – yet we sat there in utter silence for a good ten minutes without interacting with one another even once. Oh, how I wished someone would have farted.

Rewind to the previous week. My birthday. I did something unheard of and took the day off of work and my computer. I came back that night to over 500 email notifications of Facebook birthday greetings. It was cool, it was overwhelming, and it was time consuming – though deeply appreciated nonetheless. But, here’s the thing. Literally hundreds of those greetings were from people I don’t even know – they were fans of this, followers of that – yet they were sending me very intimate birthday wishes filled with Sweethearts and Loves. Men I have never met in my life leaving messages like, “Happy Birthday Love” and “Happy Birthday Beautiful, when can we get together?” – as though we are lovers or actual friends.

I have had friends ask me what I think of a certain person, or where I met a certain person, who insists that they are a friend of mine – people I’ve never met in my entire life. Turns out these people sent me a friend request on Facebook and, because I am on there to market the hell out of all the things I’m on there to market the hell out of, I accepted. Suddenly they are my friend for real. So totally weird. And so totally not true.

The Internet and social media are great tools for so many things but they really have replaced the need for developing so many skills required to be a normal social human being. Men that live in their parents basements and have never been out with a real live woman are suddenly dating machines because they send weird emails hitting on three dozen women a night. Honey, that ain’t dating, it’s stalking. And it’s creepy.

A quickly typed OMG or LOL and we think we’ve really connected with someone. I guarantee that if that room filled with my fellow Traffic School victims had housed computers there would have been witty banter, interesting conversations or, at the very least, we would have known one another's names.

We walk through this life that we are all experiencing together not making eye contact, not interacting in the slightest and doing everything we possibly can to avoid being touched or affected by one another in the least – then we get on line and drop our boundaries and our pants to strange faces on a screen. I just find it all very weird. And sad.

So, the next time you have the chance to smile, say hello, interact, or share a moment with a real live human please do so. You just might end up feeling a little more alive and real. You might make a friend that actually knows who you are or could honestly make your world a better place to be in – if only for a few minutes. Or at the very least, you might end up having a whole lot of fun being touched by someone other than yourself.

LOL.