This is a topic I’ve refrained from talking about for awhile, but I think probably many people can relate to this problem. Friends who don’t use Facebook. This last weekend Corina and I hosted our annual Halloween party. We had a full house show up and everyone had a blast, yet still the most common refrain from friends were inquiries about people who don’t use Facebook and whether they had been invited. In most cases my response was no. Sure, I feel bad about not inviting some of my friends, but having to chase them down via phone, email or MSN has just become too much of a hassle, especially when compared to the ease of use the site allows me when organizing an event. In most cases its not just one person that I need to contact, but many. The problem multiplies exponentially the more people you need to contact. It just becomes a vicious cycle or telephone tag, emails for people who essentially want special treatment because they have chosen to be out of the loop. Generally people who don’t use Facebook just complicate my life by adding multiple additional steps to organizing any type of social gathering anymore.


I find that most people that I know who don’t use Facebook do so with the mindset that they are somehow bucking the trends and avoiding the herd mentality of others around them. I can relate, I resisted the lure of Facebook for quite awhile before giving in. Since then I’ve come to realize that Facebook is less a social network and more of a phase in the next generation of communication. Smoke signals, morse code, carrier pigeon, telephone, email, instant messenger. They are all means with which we’ve used to communicate between people. To me, Facebook has become the way to communicate with my friends that I don’t see on a regular basis, and I know it has for many others out there. It has become such a crucial tool that those who choose to ignore it essentially becomes recluse in my life. Facebook is so commonplace now that it seems about as stupid as raging against the telephone. It just doesn’t make any sense.

For those who don’t use Facebook, I’m not telling you that you need to join and add your 3rd grade girlfriend as a friend, I’m just saying sign-up, add the people you would consider friends, turn up the profile security, turn off all the notifications aside from events and your inbox. You don’t have to share every gory detail of your life just because you sign-up. Just enable people you know to be able to contact you and include you in what is going on in their lives. To me this doesn’t seem like too much to ask.