Facebook is the devil

It's no secret to my friends and acquaintances that I spend a fair share of time on the facebooks. But what they don't know is that, in between posting moronic quizzes like, "Who is your hip hop husband?" or "What is your robot name?" or even as I write status updates about what I've eaten, or how I could live in sweatpants, I am really dying inside. Well, maybe just a little.

Lately I feel it's become more of a sadistic endeavor than a lighthearted means of "socializing." For instance, I have to stop myself from peeking at the profile of any guy that I have been dating or intend to date because, more often than not, there will be some ballsy girl marking her territory, making date plans via a public forum. Or there will be some pictures that I care not to see. Like, for instance, when I was dating someone a year ago. We had been seeing each other for nearly four months (a big deal for Singles Capital of the World standards here in SF), and I was really excited about him. So one day, I have a friend over, and she wants to see his picture. So I look to his page, and, lo and behold, there he is being straddled by this girl "friend" of his, with her tongue down his throat (they were surrounded by a crowd of onlookers; obviously very drunk). To add insult to injury, when I confronted him about it, he was shocked that I didn't just laugh it off. After all, he said, "she's married to my best friend! And I was the preacher who married them!" In his eyes, my bad. Only in San Francisco, right?

But recently, as much as I am glad to see my exes happy and in love, I really don't need to see pictures of them every time I log onto the sight. Specifically, there's the case of ______ who I haven't been with in about five years. Long story short, we had an intense international love affair, and he broke my heart. I'll never forget one of our final fights, right before he dumped me. He was invited to go to St. Tropez with some buddies, and I threw a fit over it. I imagined it to be like Lake Havasu, only with supermodels and billionaires. I wouldn't have put up a fuss except for the fact that I was strictly not invited. This was to be a "lad's trip" (he was British). And I know what young Englishmen do on vacation--I've seen it firsthand--they toss away their cultural oppression and let their proverbial hair down, female commitments/significant others be damned. So I was not cool with that, and I had to, at the very least, try to get him to invite me. In the end, he never took the trip, but he did dump me just a month later.

So recently I have noticed that, every time I look to the upper right hand corner of the home screen to view the "highlights" section, there's ______ in St. Tropez, up at the very top in a revolving set of pictures from somebody's album. But that's not all! He's posing with his girlfriend of a few years, a stunning half-Japanese theater actress with a fondness for wearing blouses with necklines that are mere slits dropping down and falling well below her "girls." These pictures have been popping up for the last two weeks. One day, there they are, slow dancing to a jazz band beneath a festival lighted canopy. And on another day, there they are, sipping martinis on a yacht. Or another, lying poolside, looking deep into each other's eyes.

I feel that I have reached the age where I can see the cosmic pranks going on in my life and give a hearty laugh--this, however, is ridiculous.

But today I was mentioning the "hilarity" of this whole situation to someone, and my friend on the phone actually had an f'book story to top it. Instead of her upper right hand corner being filled with exes and their significant others, it was filled with friend suggestions. And one of the most common suggestions that pops up: a friend that had died more than a year ago. Fortunately, my friend has a healthy attitude towards this, and sees the absurdity for what it is.

So apparently, once you've shuffled off this mortal coil, your facebook account lives on! Desperately seeking new facebook friends! This creeps me out a lot you guys. I mean, I can only imagine how bizarre it must be if one were to look up an old high school pal, request their friendship, and, as time goes by and they have not accepted your request, start to think "what an asshole!" So then, you start to ask around, "Hey, what ever happened to _____?" Eventually someone breaks it to you: "Oh _____, yeah, she died like three years ago!"

It's like a creepy ending to a ghost story or something. Only it's real life, brought to you by facebook. I've said it once, I'll say it again: facebook is the devil.