I’ve signed up for various social network sites, though to date LiveJournal is the only one I actually use with any stunning regularity. And in the past, I’ve particularly made disparaging comments about Facebook, saying “I don’t really know what it’s for.” and complained that it mostly seemed to be for spamming other people with quizzes and other fluff.
Well, I would like to redact all my statements from the past about the uselessness of Facebook, as it has within the last two weeks reconnected me with two dear friends I had lot complete track of.
Deanya was a college student working at Waldenbooks when she noticed a couple of high school kids browsing the science fiction section and struck up a conversation. On learning that these two kids were into role playing games, she mentioned the gaming club she and her husband were members of, and invited us to drop by and check it out. Thus began my (and Jeff (hejira2006)’s) association with the Carolina Game Club, and introduced me to a number of great people and quite a number of great games. I lost touch with most of those folks after I moved to Georgia, sadly. Just a few days ago, Jeff and I were chatting on IM and an old gaming-related joke from those days came up, and I wondered out loud “I wonder whatever became of Deanya?”, so I did a little searching and found her Facebook profile. A few days later we were chatting on IM and catching up on the last 20 years, like no time had passed at all.
Once I moved to Georgia, I got a job working in a fundraising call centre (I’m not proud of this, but we were desperately broke at the time and it paid very well. Sorry for interrupting your dinner….) and I met a guy who introduced me to MUDs. Lacking actual home Internet service at the time (this was late 1991/early 1992), I would go and use computers in the Macintosh labs at the University of Georgia campus. (Not being a student meant I didn’t have an account with the University, but no one ever really checked.) It was there I met a lovely lab assistant named Cat, who told me about a MUD that she and her friends were developing, if I was interested in checking it out. Not long after that, the MUD I was playing (Apocalypse II) lost it’s site, so I logged into Cat’s new MUD, JediMUD. Thus began an association with a game that would bring me friends, chosen family, and more than one love affair. Unfortunately, right around the time that kitanzi moved down to Georgia, Cat disappeared and all of us lost touch with her.
Today when I got back from lunch, I was surprised and delighted to see the following in my inbox: “Cat [Lastname] has added you as a friend on Facebook.”
So, you know, Facebook is just all right with me. I’m still not sure how to use it. But i know now what it’s for. It’s for drawing the parts of your world that had falling a bit far away closer to you again. And that’s a good thing.
(God help me, I’m starting to understand the allure of Twitter, too. But that’s another post…)