A Charleston Newbie's Guide to Facebook: The Wonderful (Evil) 'Social' Network

I'm sure I'm not the only person that on a daily basis checks Facebook every few hours to see what my friends and family are saying and doing across the country. I have a little bonus that it is part of my job to go on Facebook and monitor what's going on, so that gives me the freedom to do so pretty much whenever I want.

BUT...when you have recently moved to a new city where you haven't met a ton of people, logging on to Facebook can be both fun and depressing...at the same time.

You get to see all of the fun you are missing: new babies being born, parties missed, and rallies you are unable to attend. I mean, in the 20 years I lived in DC, there was not one rally or march I wanted to attend, even though I do pay attention to politics. The second we move farther than driving distance, John Stewart and Steven Colbert decide they are going to have this awesome rally on the Washington Mall with food, fun, entertainment...oh yeah, and ALL OF MY FRIENDS!

When you see these types of things on Facebook you say to yourself 'did I make the right choice? I used to think I did, but now I'm not so sure'. And you tend to forget the many hours you wished to move to the city you now reside, because, well, your friends and family are just having such an awesome time without you.

Here's the deal, however. The right choice was made. Because as soon as you decide you need to move back to wherever it is you moved from, you will instantly regret it. It's like going back to a toxic relationship. You forget about the hours of your life spent wasted sitting in rush hour traffic and the many awful things said to you by strangers on the city streets and how if someone approached you on the street wanting to talk to you it was best to cross the street to the opposite side to avoid them as they were most likely 'crazy'. Those people are still there living amongst your loved ones and are ready to dish out some more negativity if you let them. So let's not be hasty. :)

But Facebook makes it seem like the crazy people have been deported from DC and that everyone is having a wonderful time and making money hand over fist in this awful economy. That, my friends, is what Facebook is really good at. One of my friends once said FaceBrag should be added to the dictionary and I would tend to agree. If I don't have anything good to say about how wonderful my life is on a particular day, I tend to post pictures or nothing at all, because I would rather not have 200+ friends feeling sorry for me. I would rather talk about how amazing my life is so other people can be envious and start booking their flights to come visit.

So...why do we all spend so many hours on this virtual reality 'social network' called Facebook? Because it is something to do and when you don't live near your loved ones it's a brilliant free way to keep up with them. The challenge that we are all forgetting when we are on it is if we are there, mingling in our virtual comfort zone, we are not out making new friends with real people. When chat rooms first came out, I was in High School, and I remember thinking how awful it would be to spend most of your time on a computer talking to random people rather than going outside and doing things and making real friends. The funny thing is, I think just about everyone (myself included) now spends most of their time social networking on what I believe are anti-social networks because I have seen Facebook serve more to divide friends and relationships in the past few years than create new ones.

When it comes to social networking, the goal is to proceed with (major) caution and moderation. Just like how eating too many pickles is bad (speaking from experience!), or drinking too much wine, too much Facebooking is also really not good.

Am I the only person that does this?