Facebook Failure

I am a Facebook failure.

I was recently bullied into signing up for this maniacal social media tool by friends I see about once a year.  We would have a pleasant get together, catch up with all the activities of each other and our respective families, and that seemed to work just fine.  One gets the highlights of the year - the social Cliff notes.  They, however, unbeknownst to me, (Where did that word come from?  Leave it to the Elizabethans to combine 18 different words - unbelievamazincrediblest!) anyway, they had been keeping up throughout the year through Facebook, so they thought I should do this too.  "Just think of all you're missing!"

Well, I have found out all that I have been missing.

I have found that everyone has way more "friends" than me.  Oh, when I first signed up and stated where I went to high school, I was bombarded with friend requests from old high schoolmates with whom I had not talked to in close to 40 years.  So now I get to follow their lives on a daily basis.  Awesome.

Also, I have found that Facebook is like one on-going, continuous, Christmas newsletter delighting me with all the travels, activities, achievements, and accomplishments of my friends.  So now I know on a daily basis that everyone has more of a life than me.  Sweet.

Apparently, all my friends have this incredibly close relationship with their children as well.  They comment on each other's pictures, postings, and "likes."  I am afraid to request that my own children be my friend.  As it is, I get an occasional text and a phone call from time to time.  If I were to try to take the relationship to the next level, such as "friending" (which is apparently a verb now, much like "tasking" or "disrespecting") I am unsure of what response I want - do I want to be "friended" and know all the intimate details of my children's lives?  Or if they don't "friend" me, are they protecting me from too much information or do they really not like me?  And even more important, is "facebooked" now a verb, too?  Wonderful.

In addition, because I cannot figure out how to post a profile picture, each time I go to my "wall" I am confronted with a stark grey outline of a phantom person which makes me feel like I am in witness protection.  Swell.

So, I am reduced to "facestalking" (will someone please help me with this language?) - logging in every time I get an email alert that someone has "tagged" me (OK, now this is just getting ridiculous!) or posted something new, only to find out it's because I am only just on their friend list and every time they post something I am included.  It's like being at a wedding and you only know the bride, (who, of course, is very busy with all her guests and has no time to talk to you) so you are at the cousin's table and everyone is talking about stuff you know nothing about.  And they are letting you sit there because of course your reception place card authorizes your presence there but they have absolutely nothing to say to you because you don't know them and were too late in signing up for Facebook to have developed a relationship with them, because they already have enough "friends."  Peachy.