Getting Lost on Facebook

November 1, 2009

There used to be something nostalgic about digging through your old backpack or handbag looking for that miniscule piece of paper where you'd once jotted down an old friend's parents' phone number. The friend in question had moved, at least three times since your last communication, and the only way to track him down was to dial his parents who'd occupied the same apartment in New York for the past thirty years. With any luck the pencil scratches would still be visible and your friend's parents would still be alive.

Ten years later and that friend is you. You've moved four times in the past five years and you're trying desperately to forget about an old roommate, an ex-girlfriend, a few flea-ridden couches and a landlord who wanted his rent paid on time. You just want to get lost, at least long enough to reset your battery.

But changing your number or letting your cell phone account lapse isn't enough. That girlfriend talked you into joining Facebook a few years ago and in the span of three years you amassed four hundred friends. Everyone you ever passed by, smiled at, lunched with or hung out with on a subway platform can track you down in cyberspace. Fortunately, a huge percentage of these passer-friends have no clue who you are. They friended you on Facebook only to bolster their collection of face stamps. These are not the people who trouble you. It's the rest of the list, the remaining 10% who, despite your vagrancies, still care. They know your name, remember your face and always want to have your number.

But shutting down your Facebook profile would bar you from reading your ex-girlfriend's wall and snooping around on her page for clues to her whereabouts, which you plan on tracking on a daily basis until you've moved on. Creating a fake profile would violate the FB Terms of Use, which is nothing you want to chance considering your recent brush with the law. And asking someone else if you could occasionally log in to their account for the purposes of stalking the ex does not seem like a good way to foster a new and improved psyche.

Stuck on Facebook

In your efforts to start your life anew, however, you need to drop out of society for a decent period of time. No one needs to know that you're working the graveyard shift at McDonald's while you piece your life back together and no one should be able to reach you via FB message when you don't turn up at your brother's wedding. You just need serious down time without explanation.

Going MIA is a coward's game that Facebook makes impossible. There are too many ways to poke, tag, message and pester you. Deactivation is akin to excommunication and you've already exiled yourself to the dank recesses of your downswing. You don't need the extra slap. You just want the breathing room. In order to make it work, you'll have to pull in one trusted, tried and true friend.

Game Changer

The quintessential Facebook Friend will monitor your page for you. He or she knows that your most healthy course of action is to stop logging in and have him or her check your status regularly. This way your friend can check your messages, posts and tags, and find out which friends, if any, are desperate to get in touch with you. Whenever necessary, your friend can send a casual message to whomever you've worried, letting them know, in the most nebulous of terms, that you'll be in touch in a few months and that at the moment you've got a lot going on.

Savor the freedom. You'll be in good standing with your Facebook family as you go about dismantling the other parts of your life.

You can take your McDonald's savings and rest in Argentina for three or four months, rearranging your brain cells in a different time zone, with a different language, in another hemisphere. There will be nothing like the joy of starting fresh without having to check in on all those thumbnails, pokes and requests.

Once you find love again, you'll be ready to contact that one true Facebook Friend who not only checked in on your profile and helped you save face, but also agreed to give you regular status updates on your ex. Strong, reconfigured and high on life, you can finally tell him that the gig is up. You're ready to deactivate.

Whether you ever rejoin Facebook will depend on how many acquaintances you feel you need in order to stay connected to the rest of the world. As for friends, the one who came to your rescue made it crystal clear that real friends are there all along. NewsSip

Photo Credit: Man on Phone by Sadboy

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