AnderFacebooking

Opinion >> Creative Nonfiction / Nov. 2, 2009 at 9:54 pm

I’m not that creepy Facebook dude!

By Lex Singer

A Facebook status or a fan page is an extension of one’s self, much like dorm room posters or stilts. A status can be a revelation or it can be something as simple as “Kevin is boooooooooooooooored.” You can become a fan of things as exotic as Vasto De Gamo or as mundane as string cheese. Either way, it’s fine as long as you have control over your own updates. Sure, I’ve gotten the occasional inevitable comment of “I wish was there was a dislike button,” and at other times, the only person to have liked a status that I thought was pretty clever was my aunt. It’s never too big of a deal, though. Statuses and fan pages seem about as harmless as baby pandas — that is, until a friend of yours hijacks your computer and changes it. Then statuses become the opposite of harmless; they become kung fu pandas.

I will admit that I am very prone to not logging out, which is the first step in every Facebook debacle. I leave myself exposed and for that I’m oftentimes punished. My friends have made me a fan of things like “The Third Reich,” “polio,” and even “microwaves that don’t work.” These are all a little off-putting, but certainly not earth shattering. Yet recently, a friend took it a little too far.

When I went to the library for the night, I left my computer on my bed with my Facebook inevitably open. My friend must have come into my room looking for an Oreo, seen the open Facebook and pounced. He did as he pleased with it and then to make matters worse, evidently took an Oreo on the way out.



Walking back from the library later that night, I checked my phone. I was greeted with a text from my mom that read, “you sure you okay?” and a voicemail from my dad saying “just wanted to let you know and remind you that your pappy and nanny are going to see this.” As I was walking up the stairs, my friend asked me “what’d you exactly do at the library?” Something was up and I hoped to god it wasn’t that I had inadvertently mooned all of References and somehow Anderson Cooper had picked the story up.

I ran to my computer in a panic, and saw something far worse than I could have ever imagined: my friend had me a fan of 79 sex-related pages. Whether it was “sex on safari,” “sex while wearing socks,” or “sex in a hovercraft,” I would be receiving regular updates about it. It would take hours to get rid of all the pages and years to dispel the rumor that I was that creepy kid, either the one who thought this stuff was funny or the one who was in awe of people who enjoyed having “sex with a chimney sweeper.” This was bad, really bad.

There was nothing I could do though; I had homework so I let it be, just waiting for a moment to strike back. I started noticing people shooting me dirty looks while I was walking down Sheridan. While showing a slide of a nude bust of a woman from Ancient Greece, I swear that my ancient art history TA gave me the stink eye. I wanted to send out e-mails over every listserv imaginable that it wasn’t me, I wasn’t the weirdo. But there was nothing I could do.

Then one day, my friend who had single-handedly sabotaged my life and any future prospects of a job or a wife of any kind left his computer on his seat while running to the bathroom during class. I had to act quickly on this golden opportunity as I knew time was fleeting. With the adrenaline rushing, with all of those dirty looks and texts running through my mind, all I could think of was “my butt is itchy.” It wasn’t even true for me at the time, but I thought it would be a death blow; nothing in my mind could possibly be more embarrassing.



So, with a slight smirk, I alerted the whole world to the slight irritation on my neighbor’s behind. Either his friends were wearing cheaply made denim and also were beginning to get a rash or maybe they just found his honesty refreshing, because all of them loved it. In either scenario, I was the loser.

Yet, as the comments continued to pour in, I began to realize that people don’t take Facebook as seriously as I once thought. Every time someone said “you should get some cream for that dude” or “maybe you should try sleeping on your stomach tonight,” I relaxed a little. As demonstrated by his friends, Facebook statuses are not representative of a person. Facebook is such a major part of our lives that we forget we can get rid of it at anytime. If Jason’s status says, “nothing starts the day off like eating poo for breakfast,” it’s probably not true. On the off chance that that morning routine does in fact keep Jason going throughout the day, then it’s probably for the best that people don’t believe him anyway.

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All Facebook references to Anderson, except the one in the article itself, are by Peter.