On the 5th Day of Christmas...

My Universe gave to me...

FACEBOOK

Never really got into Friendster. I have a MySpace page but can't remember how to access it and haven't been on it in years. I joined Facebook at the urging of a hipster friend who said it was a "must." Especially if I was doing comedy. And my hipster friend, who's name rhymes with Schmoo was correct!

What's been awesome about it is being able to stay connected with people who are no longer in my immediate orbit but who used to delight me in one way or another. Even the worst days could be made a tiny bit better by seeing their always witty, interesting, funny posts. It's also very gratifying when other people "get" me and respond in kind. When I was in my deepest, darkest depression, this summer - literally going nowhere, seeing no one - I could and often would go to Facebook. It's always there, no matter the time of day or night. During that time, I even got really sucked into Mafia Wars - it kind of became my "job" over the summer. I got great satisfaction watching my fake bank account grow to over a billion. At least I had money stashed in the virtual world!

What's been fascinating from an anthropological viewpoint is that, even though keeping in touch with someone on Facebook is literally a click away...some people are apparently "too busy" to even maintain that level of civility. I love posters who take the time to declare "I'm so busy I don't know what to do!" but obviously have time to post that. Howeve,r do not have time to respond to me. That was bothering me a lot for a while. But a few months ago, I just decided "Fuck it!" and defriended a bunch of people. Not in a retribury way. My goal was to reduce stress in my life wherever possible and easy to do so. Stressing about a long time friend who's just too cool for school to interact with me? No more. Deleted. Funny thing is, once that happened some of these people contacted me "I haven't seen your Facebook status in a while. Are you ok?" And I'm not mad at them. I get that everyone has their own stuff going on. But, don't get your stuff on my stuff. Everybody's happy. No one gets hurt.

Aother really cool by-product of putting myself out there on a social networking site has been that it really has exposed me to people who didn't know me before but "friended" me because they enjoy what I put up. Three of those people came to my show in September. That was really cool. Thanks Facebook!