Facebook and the "25 Random Things About Me" Epidemic

Or as Robie Childers calls it, "Myface"

Like the Hong Kong Flu or Bill Clinton, Facebook seems to have come from out of nowhere to infect America. Then-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004 as a specialized social networking site for Harvard students, then expanded it to other Ivy League institutions, then other universities, then high schools, then employees of certain companies such as Apple and Microsoft, then in 2006 to anyone over age 13. Its like creeping socialism. About 18 months ago, the company reported 30 million users; presently it reports 150 million users. That's a five-fold increase. By comparison, the US Government reports that the population of the United States was 303 million in 2008. What other business can report such growth rates? Maybe Starbucks in the 1990s, or crack dealers.

For those of you who aren't down (or on, I guess), Facebook is like a huge internet chat room, but any one person's access is restricted to "friends," who are other registered users that have agreed to interact with the person. "Interaction" can take several forms. Each user has a "wall" on which they can leave messages for their friends, post photos or other information, and on which their friends can leave messages. These are generally accessible to each user's friends (although some ability exists to restrict access to the wall). Friends may also send messages directly to one another outside the wall, and this is similar to e-mail in that only the sender and recipient may see the messages. Like chat rooms, users may create "groups" devoted to particular interests and issues, such as "LSU Fans." Users may join and in that manner connect with others who share that interest. Numerous businesses use Facebook as a marketing tool, in which you "friend" a business or vice versa (for example, I was asked to and did friend "Little Steven's Underground Garage" radio show). Finally, and to me, bizarrely, Facebook offers the opportunity to contact individual friends through odd non-communicative ways such as "poking" someone, or asking them to take quizzes, or giving them virtual "gifts" or asking them to "fight crime" or "throwing an octopus" at someone. If that seems difficult to follow, its because its either ridiculous or I'm just not getting it. I guess the march of human progress includes using computers and the internet to hurl an octopus at someone. Actually talking to your friends is so 2005.

Facebook the company makes money through selling advertising on each page. So every Facebook page you see has multiple advertisements. To demonstrate its value to prospective advertisers, Facebook keeps meticulous statistics on user activities. For example, it charts user status updates, photo and video uploads, minutes spent on Facebook, and "events" created. These statistics ostensibly show advertisers the value of a Facebook ad, much like TV and radio ratings or newspaper/periodical subscription numbers do the same for those media. The salient point here is that the Facebook company strives to develop more applications to keep you using Facebook, so it can sell ads. (I have seen it referred to as "Facecrack").

Even though I have semi-plunged in to Facebook world, even now I have difficulty figuring out exactly how it makes anyone's life better. Just about anything you can do on Facebook you could do through other media, and other computer media. Businesses can advertise on internet sites, friends can e-mail each other or contact one another through special interest web sites or chat rooms. True, you can't "send a vampire" after someone on most other media, but really, is that such a bad thing?

As near as I can tell from my own Facebook experience, it appears to serve three real functions. First, it gives the stay-at-homes, particularly moms, a more efficient means of staying in touch with friends (and even developing new ones). Second, its a way for "long lost" friends and acquaintances to find one another. Google and Yahoo are not well suited for this task (or for stalking ex-girlfriends either, I'm told). I've had people come out of the proverbial woodwork, people I haven't seen or thought of in years, leap out of my past (where many were comfortably in residence, I might add) through Facebook. Finally, its a timewaster. I guess downloading porn and playing fantasy football at work only goes so far. Many employers have blocked access to Facebook (and the rival myspace) on the grounds that its diverting work time. All this flinging of fish and visiting your friends' pages takes a lot of time. Time that could be better spent working (or checking out the Maxim or Houston Texans cheerleaders web pages). For many, Facebook can become extremely addictive, to the point where they get sucked into "Facebook World."

I have mixed feelings about Facebook. On the one hand, I welcome anything that allows me to keep up with my friends and others, and for me to update them about what I'm doing, without actually having to talk to them or, God forbid, having someone come to my house. That's not entirely facetious either. Its often much easier to catch up just with the few clicks of my mouse than to find the time to engage in a lengthy "get caught up" phone call or lunch meeting. On the other hand, I don't particularly like the idea of potentially hundreds of people seeing my comments on something a friend put on their wall. In fact, one friend's urban girl survival posse started trashing me for a comment I put on their "girl's" wall, which they totally misunderstood. Most people aren't friends with all their friends on the same terms, nor do they have the same style or sort of give and take with everyone with whom they are friends. I know I can kid some of my friends, and I know there's others that I can't. Some have certain "off limits" issues, and some have no boundaries at all. I would never invite all of my friends to the same dinner party (actually I wouldn't invite any of my friends to a dinner party, unless it was at someone else's house and I got to select the menu). Facebook tends to put together people who shouldn't be put together, which can cause confusion and hurt feelings. One of my "friends" is a pretty hardline conservative individual, who constantly gets into flame wars with liberal friends. The scuds they hurl back and forth often border on personal, are difficult to read, and wind up taking an inordinate amount of space to follow. So I've tried to avoid making comments others can see, except if I'm absolutely sure no one will find anything remotely negative about it. And where's the fun in that?

Like ultimate fighting, reality TV, or celebrity poker shows, a trend sweeping the nation through Facebook has been the "25 Random Things About Me" phenomenon. This apparently is the Facebook version of the beginning of a Sunday School class, an AA meeting, or the first day of school. Its a lengthier version of the typical interview question, "Can you tell me something interesting about yourself." The scenario involves you listing 25 random things about yourself, like "I like cheese," I guess, then listing off friends you want to do the same (and whom you want to read your 25 random things). But some people turn it into "25 extremely serious and profound things about me" and it turns into Chicken Soup for the Soul on Facebook. Oy, I have a headache just typing this. If it sounds like the instructions to Monopoly, its because it is. I suppose the point, other than to inflate Facebook's user numbers, is to enable friends to get to know one another better. That's supposed to be the point of Facebook generally, and each person's profile page offers unlimited space to list things about themselves. So I'm not sure exactly what this 25 things exercise adds but who am I to stand in the way of progress? It shouldn't bother me, but it kind of does. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I kind of like all of us having a little mystery between us. Seven random things might have been more acceptable; 25 is like having a party guest that won't leave, or your ex-girlfriend who you stayed friends with years later confessing over her third through fifth margatinis all the terrible things she did behind your back while you were still dating. It is kind of flattering in some way that someone wants to know 25 things about me, but I generally have this sneaking suspicion I've been "tagged" just to fill a quota. Like the kid who's always the last person picked for dodgeball. Besides, it would be more interesting if it were "25 random things about you" and friends picked one of their friends and listed 25 things about them. Think of the drama.

But as I've often stated, I never go anywhere without a purpose, so today that purpose is to tell you 25 random things about me. Feel free to ignore, respond in kind, report me to the Better Business Bureau, whatever.

1. In high school, my friend Melinda named the fetal pig she was dissecting in biology class after me. Kind of hurtful, but I give her points for creativity and it did suit me. At least she was thinking of me.

2. As an attorney, I have represented both Enron and a Mexican national indicted for transporting women across state lines for prostitution. The Mexican pimp was by far easier to work with.

3. I have dated a stripper, but she was nowhere near the trashiest woman I've ever dated.

4. I've dated a Hooters Girl, and she was among the classiest women I've dated.

5. The trashiest woman I ever dated was a Baylor University graduate.

6. I attended the 1968 NCAA Final Four, and the Oilers-Raiders Monday Night Football game where a fan shot the finger at the camera (prompting Don Meredith to state, "there's one fan who still thinks his team is number one").

7. I saw Cary Grant. He was touring college campuses in a question and answer session format. I (along with Kimberly, Cheryl and Darrell) sat in the middle of the 10th row for the two hour performance.

8. I rode in an elevator at the Loews Anatole Hotel in Dallas with a close to passing out drunk Gary Busey and his "handler". Busey glared at me the whole ride up to the bar at the top floor, but never said a word. Neither did I. I was expecting him to lunge at me and rip my still-beating heart out of my chest Indiana Jones style.

9. Only one person has ever hit me, and in my defense, she was a complete nut job.

10. The wildest party I've ever attended was a Baylor frat party after the 1982 Baylor-UT game in Waco. I had sat in the Baylor flash card section with the free tickets I got from Jackie or Kathy somebody I knew from Clear Lake who was going to Baylor. She later dropped out of Baylor, moved to Austin and opened an adult video store with her boyfriend. She's not the girl from item 5 either.

11. I went to "deckhand school" at Hollywood Marine in Channelview before starting my first job as an associate at a law firm. I learned how to tie together barges for towboats. I think I was the only guy there that didn't have a prison record.

12. Someone in a passing car shot me in the back of the head with a BB gun while I was jogging one night on the Seawall in Galveston.

13. Women who have dated me have called me such names as "cupcake," "papi," and "wild thing." To my face. I imagine lots of other things behind my back.

14. A witness once got sick after I cross-examined him during a hearing.

15. I've been to eight Grateful Dead concerts, and four Frank Zappa concerts.

16. I've been mistaken for a preacher, Charlie Sheen, and the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

17. I was on the Kitirik show in Houston when I was a child. Meow.

18. The sponsor of the National Honor Society at my high school blackballed me from becoming a member because I used to cut up, quietly, with Marshall Schott and David Sewell in her class the year before. I have been bitter about it ever since.

19. My first car was supposed to be a sweet 1980 Camaro that the niece of my parents' friends owned, but a tree fell on it and destroyed it during Hurricane Alicia. So I had to settle for a 1977 Cutlass with a 350 V-8 that broke down every other time I drove it.

20. David Duke hit on my date at an LSU football game once when I went to the concession stand.

21. I can do four impressions very well: Edna from the Incredibles, Elvis Presley, the Wild and Crazy Guys from the old Saturday Night Live, and Marvin the Martian.

22. I've had as many near-death experiences as times I've been in love. Seems like an appropriate symmetry.

23. My closest friend recently told me I walk like I think I'm Elvis. She's wrong. I actually walk like I think I'm Mel from the Dick Van Dyke show.

24. My first real job was working at the Humble ISD's un-air conditioned warehouse the summer after my sophomore year in high school. My boss was an extremely bitter dwarf with a hunched back, who hated me intensely and yelled at me every day. That was the summer I grew a beard. He got fired a few years later for numerous sexual harassment allegations involving the district's secretaries.

25. I miss my mother every day. The anchor is gone from my life.