More on Facebook

I have a love/hate relationship with facebook. I love the idea that I can stay connected to people across the world, as well as reconnect with friends from my youth. I hate that it's used in place of e-mail.

I'm old enough to remember a time when there were only two ways to stay connected - long distance phone calls and the U.S. Postal Service. What's funny is, people spend more today on their internet than they did back then on calls across the country. I don't see the reasoning that it's "cheaper" to use facebook.

E-mail is a different story. I love e-mail, even though I rarely use it anymore. It was a natural progression from snail mail to communicate with people at a faster pace. It allows for paragraphs of information to be conveyed without the annoyance of envelopes and stamps. But social media has come to the forefront and all but made e-mail irrelevant. Now we know our friends' daily goings on in an instance, so there's not much to catch up on. But the thing about e-mail is, it's private.

Back in 2009, you may remember the efforts of women on facebook to raise awareness of breast cancer by posting one word updates - the color of their bra. Men across cyberspace kept asking, "Why are you posting colors every day?"

"It's the color of my bra! It's to help raise awareness of breast cancer!"

"Breast cancer? What's that?"

Wait...that's not how it went. More like, "You mean like those pink ribbons and Susn G. Koman foundation?"

"Exactly!"

Being a natural born cynic, I raised the obvious point that we are already aware of breast cancer, being that we see the ribbons and ads all the time. If you don't know about it by now, well, where the fuck have you been? My older sister did not like my response, and facebook widened the rift that already existed between us.

"Women die every day from breast cancer!"

"I doubt that had to do with awareness."

So we got into an argument about it...on her facebook wall. I made the reasonable argument that the idea of posting colors in order to feel involved in coming up with a cure was absolutely meaningless. She wasn't doing anything to help because, like I originally stated, we are already aware of the disease.

Man, the vitriol flew like sushi after the Heimlich maneuver.

"You wouldn't think like that if someone close to you died from breast cancer!" You see, her mother-in-law, whom she was not fond of except when it came to spoiling her kids, died of breast cancer in 2009. A touchy subject, but not what I was talking about. Besides, she's my sister, and she doesn't know me? I wouldn't think like that? Really?

Look, I said, there are more meaningful and tangible ways to fight breast cancer that you can do right here on facebook. You could set up a page and ask for donations to give to organizations in your mother-in-law's name. You can blog about your experiences and ask people to help those women in need. But to feel like you're involved in the treatment because you posted a color on your facebook status is about as dumb as it gets. It's lazy, and it only serves to make you feel better about what happened to your husband's mother.

Now, I'm not one to take an internet fight lightly. As a matter of fact, I quote enjoy them. I spent many years starting trouble on message boards just to get reactions from people because, simply, it's funny to watch people go nuts over a few choice words. People have no control over their own emotions when they see something that goes against their beliefs. It's called cognititve dissonance, and my sister was primed. Not that I was doing it on purpose.

Soon all her in-laws and friends were chiming in.

"Who's that asshole?"

"What an idiot! He doesn't get it!"

"Oh, that's my little brother," as if I were a naive child without the intelligence to recognize meaningless gestures.

My sister was mad, and enjoying the attention she was getting from her friends because, frankly, she's a spoiled little brat. I've often theorized that our rivalry had to do with the fact that I was born 17 months after her, and she never got the chance to be the baby of the family. She's jealous, basically, which is an accusation I don't often use. But it fits. Everything she has done in her life has been about seeking attention, from the time she faked a sprained ankle for sympathy when she was 13, to the time she was diagnosed with Lupus...perfect for her because it meant that she no longer had to work, she had to be taken care of, and she had an excuse to bitch at people who called her on her bullshit (namely me).

Then her son, my nephew, got into it. "You're an asshole! Stop being mean to my mom! You wouldn't act like that if grandma died of breast cancer!" Yes...I would.

Since when is the truth some form of abuse? Of course, all her friends and in-laws agreed with her. That's what friends do, especially when they are completely ignorant of the other person's mindset.

And that's where facebook fails. I said the whole idea of posting colors was stupid and meaningless, and that's all anyone saw. They didn't see the options I raised. They didn't see that I was defending Marlene's memory. All they saw was the big, bad meanie treating their precious family member horribly. And she loved it. She felt like she was the center of attention, that everyone liked her and agreed with her, forgetting the fact that stupid and ignorant agreement amounts to nothing more than a validation of her own stupidity and stubbornness.

Would this have happened if it were done through e-mail? Well, my sister and my nephew promptly "unfriended" me when I pointed out my argument again and defended myself. E-mail would have led to longer and more vitriolic responses from her, but it wouldn't have changed the fact that she's an idiot. At least I would have been able to explain to her in no uncertain terms that I was right and that she was being histrionic. Then she would have just ignored me.

So in the end, she "disowned" me. Thanks, facebook, I needed that. How two people can come from the same parents growing up exactly the same way, yet have very different outlooks on something as simple as humanity might not be explained.

All I know is, facebook allows for this kind of event to happen. It's set up for it. If people took the time actually to talk or write to each other, we wouldn't have such bastardized misunderstandings. Instead, we're left with "RED!", "BEIGE!", "GREEN!", and "This is retarded."