Where will it end?
On Thursday, while I was at the Arizona State Legislature working on a story, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. Thinking it may be a source for the story I was working on, I jumped to answer it and couldn‘t believe my eyes.
It was a source all right. It was the source of incessant phone calls about how to use very straightforward technology and the source of years of asking me about whom I was dating and what she was like. It was the queen of all that ails me: my mother.
At 12:42 p.m. Monday, my mother sent me a text message telling me to “clean up the language on face book.” I was baffled.
How on earth had my mother, who calls me roughly 30 times per week for instructions on how to work a DVD player, managed to infiltrate my cyber-life and more impressively, alert me to her opinion of my foul-mouth via text message?
I thought it was a hoax. I thought Ashton Kutcher was going to pop out of the bushes and barrage me with a much unwanted hug, some stupid slang and call me “dog,” or “bro.”
I called everyone who could have possibly helped her with this ruse, and after some serious investigating I came to the conclusion that she did this on her own.
This is an alarming trend. Not only am I now Facebook “friends” with my mother, her friends have too invaded my “friend list,” and I have some suspicion that there are reinforcements looming to aid in the full on military-esque occupation of my personal life.
I’m not talking about being overrun with Facebook “friends,” but these are very old people — people I haven’t seen or spoken to in years, people who changed my diapers and clearly have no business seeing me in compromising positions like one, for example, where I may look like I’m being sexually assaulted by the Captain Morgan pirate, or read photo comments or captions with a collection of “F-bombs” that would make George Carlin cringe.
This mobilization of the elderly into my space (no pun intended) is not nearly as entertaining as a nice dysfunctional 20-something with relationship problems either.
I can’t watch as their “relationship status” changes every 45 minutes, or see photos of them face-down in a puddle of their own vomit. The most entertaining updates from this new breed of geriatric Web abusers are “Forgot to take my back pill” and Christmas photos.
This is not what Facebook is for.
I joined Facebook for a few reasons: To help pick up chicks I already met in person, to stare at pictures of chicks and to give chicks a venue to stare at me. Nowhere in there do I mention anything about “social networking” or “making friends” — it was really all about chicks.
Now I’m a little older and some priorities have changed, but the main focus of my face book usage is pretty much the same.
If you’re old (over 30) you have no business in my virtual nightclub.
There is no social networking or making friends because what you’re networking with is a computer monitor. The generation that for years hounded me about how much television I watch and told me to “go outside and play” is now bumming around cyberspace when they could be out working or sending me money.
Well the tables of turned baby-boomers:
GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY MOM! YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!
E-mail James at
jaking5@asu.edu
