Sunday 26 December 2010

Should old acquaintance be removed from Facebook 'Friends' list?



This year, I received a total of one Christmas card (as in it’s made of actual paper and you don’t need a computer to see it).

I guess that means I have only one friend.

Actually, it’s fewer than that because the card was from my insurance agent and I don’t even remember what he looks like.

More importantly, he has never been my Facebook “friend”.

Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

Well, at least Facebook lets you quietly remove that old acquaintance from your “Friends” list.



No wonder the social network’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was named Time magazine’s Person Of The Year and had a movie made about him.



Thanks to Facebook, I’ve reconnected with the guys I worked with many years ago at my college newspaper in the US and found out that one of them, Adam Horowitz, is the co-writer of Tron: Legacy.



The only movie I wrote was Phua Chu Kang The Movie.

The Tron sequel earned more than US$44 million (S$58 million) at the US box office last weekend alone whereas PCK The Movie made less than 2 per cent of that amount in its entire theatrical run.

Yes, thank you very much, Facebook, for making me feel like a bigger loser than I already am.

One small consolation is that Tron: Legacy is getting reviews almost as nasty as the pans PCK got.

CNN said: “The 3D was terrible, the battles boring, and talk about a lame script!”

Ha! Take that, Horowitz! Now you know how it feels, you former writer of Lost the TV series, you.

Actually, even though we worked at the same paper at the same time, I don’t remember Horowitz at all. He’s just a friend of a Facebook “friend”.

Oh no, I think I’m suffering from second-hand Facebook envy.

According to Urban Dictionary, Facebook envy is the “feeling you get when you come across an old friend on Facebook and realise that their life turned out way better and is more interesting than yours”.

That’s why I don’t understand people with Facebook “friends” numbering more than two digits.

I have less than a hundred and I’m already struggling with self-esteem issues.

I mean, how meaningful can it be to get birthday wishes from people who were reminded by Facebook that it’s your birthday?

Even I have stopped posting Jeremih’s Birthday Sex music video on my friends’ walls on their birthdays.



Are they even really my friends? None of them ever sent me a Christmas card.

I’m looking forward to getting my one and only Chinese New Year card from my insurance agent next year.



I hope he never “adds” me on Facebook. That would just ruin a beautiful relationship. I might have to wish him a happy birthday.

- Published in The New Paper, 26 December 2010

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