Joining Facebook and Having Friends

A GIRLFRIEND had a Facebook page. Or rather, I asked her whether she had one, and she said yes. So I said, may I see it? Sure, she said. Slightly annoyed that she hadn't mentioned it to me before, I pressed on. When can you come by and show it to me, I asked? That isn't the way it works, said she. You get a computer, log onto Facebook, join, get your own page, then, you can look at other people's pages to your heart's desire. I had problems with that. Sounded a bit too impersonal, for one thing. As if by joining a huge online community, I could see her page, but that she had no intention of making me special, and dropping by my house, with her page in hand. I wanted to be special to her. Plus, all that joining Facebook stuff involved work and effort for me, a definite no no. Also, I didn't want to enter the social media swamp, or what I had, by listening to others, gotten the impression was a swamp, full of animosity, bad behavior, trivial, frivolous, foolish nonsense, just like the old chat room days. Half the internet is porn, I have heard. But, long story short, as they say, I got a page, just to look at hers. Hers was great. Full of nice pictures, witty comments, and a list of friends the went on interminably, hundreds of "friends", sharing and trading pics, posting comments, and whatever else people do on Facebook. Made me downright jealous, that she hadn't made a special point of showing me her page, but rather had just assumed that anyone, including me, who wanted to see her page, would simply join Facebook. All these friends made me jealous. I wanted to be special to her, and I thought that by looking at her page, I would be, and then I thought that by having a page of my own I would be, but alas, I began to get the idea I would be to her but another face in the Facebook crowd. Were all these people on her friends list really friends? Sure, se assured me, online friends, people she had never met in person, mostly, mostly people she never would meet in person, but some of them people she had known all her life, people who lived in the same town as she. Her pictures were mostly selfies, and all intended obviously to make her look cute and attractive, attractive to a bunch of people she would probably never meet in person. She was, it seemed to me, sharing more of her life online, and treating people online more as friends, more closely than she treated me, describing events in her life I knew nothing about, sharing pictures and stories about herself I had never seen, and, it seemed, never would see, since she evidently never intended to make any effort to share them with me. Facebook for her was a world unto itself, a world anyone could share, but only on Facebook. She was sharing more with Facebook digital computer friends than she was with me, a person who saw her nearly everyday in person. That hit me hard. It made me feel old, out of touch. I dropped hints about my feelings to her, but she merely reminded me that our relationship was fine the way it was, and that all along I only had to join Facebook to share that aspect of her life. OK, fine, I thought. I had no argument. I still don't. But it still makes me feel creepy, and lonely, and hurt, and my Facebook page still sits neglected, with nothing on it, because my only purpose in getting it was to get closer to her, which never happened. I think I have maybe eight friends on Facebook. By now she must have thousands. I don't even know whether I am one of them.