This is not entirely great news for me. To me, Facebook is… Prickly. Awkward. Not entirely User Friendly, as they say. I go there and find all sorts of information that I cannot use (updates that come to me because I am a “friend” of the person writing but that mean Absolutely Nothing to me) or find invitations to groups that I just don’t understand or am asked to take “quizzes” that (from a teacher’s perspective) are Loaded with Trick Questions.

As I wrote to a friend recently when she joined Facebook, I feel that entering those pages is like jumping into a swimming pool when you’d really rather not get wet.

Of course, sometimes one doesn’t even need to go there to get wet, so to speak. Just last week I discovered via my gmail account that I had been included yet again in a “compare people” Facebook thingamajig. The results of said evaluation informed me that I had scored in both the “best” and “worst” categories and, while the results seem both straightforward and relatively benign, I remain a bit mystified. What, for instance, does it mean to learn that one would be “the best person to be stranded on a desert island with”? All sorts of images come to mind. Perhaps this is a nod to the t.v. show Lost, which I’ve never seen, or the popular “reality” show Survivor, which I’ve also never seen. I’m really really hoping that it has nothing to do with the movie that was popular in my early high school days, that splashy Brooke Shields movie The Blue Lagoon, which, even in its sanitized-for-television format, could go Some Distance in educating the uneducated about how one discovers one’s sexuality.

Definitely hoping that my “best” award is a nod to one of the former….

In the “worst” category, I was awarded “kindest,” and this I also found mystifying and maybe even disturbing (this is a worst category? As in, kindness is a bad thing?). The social implications of such a statement are, frankly, Terrifying and I’ve decided not to think about it any more.

Just this morning, I find that I’ve been invited to take part in a (new?) Facebook quiz It’s called “Uniquely You” and, as its title seems to suggest that I won’t be comparing myself to anyone (something that I think we all do and should try to avoid whenever possible), I thought I’d give it a go. The quiz includes a variety of “goals” one might have in life, and these one is supposed to rank from 1-10. Problem is, I’m stumped from the get-go. What is most important to me in life, love or being married? Love is likely the “right” answer, but now that I’m married, one could argue that these are one and the same, or that I need to rank “being married” above love because of what that might imply, but then again that could also imply that I just want to be married no matter what which isn’t true but if it’s Bill Stevenson we’re talking about then it is true and do you see what I mean?

I didn’t take the quiz.

Once upon a time, in a fever-induced state, I actually tried to participate in one of these Facebook quiz things and it went very badly for me. I should have learned my lesson. Sorry, Friend-From-College-Shane-Whom-I-Recently-Rediscovered-Via-Facebook-And-Who-Invited-Me-To-Take-This-Quiz. Not gonna do it.

But that is what’s good about Facebook, I’ve discovered. It’s the Rediscovery. I’ve been “on” Facebook now for a while (over a year), and have recently experienced a rash of reconnections with friends from college and high school. Here are people I haven’t seen in Years but who occasionally cross my mind. It’s so great to suddenly see them there and to hear how they are and to have the opportunity– so much easier than snail-mail or telephone– to reconnect. This, O Reader, is Good.

Interestingly, as I was poking about on Facebook last night, a friend IM’d me– and this is a relatively new friend (in the scheme of things) and a local friend and, sadly, a friend I have not communicated with since August. We chatted last night and we’ve chatted again this morning, and now our whole family is going to her house tomorrow to spend the afternoon. Lovely.

See? Facebook is a Good Thing.

Nonetheless, I remain a blogger and will be for the foreseeable future. And I am not alone. One of my recent Facebook reconnections includes childhood-friend Jenny, who moved away to Atlanta at the beginning of 9th grade. It was great to hear from her on Facebook, great to see her photo, and really, really great to learn that she has a blog!

So I guess I’ll be spending more time on Facebook. But thank you (oh, thank you) for reading this blog.

The post Internet Musings, Part the Second appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

I’ve just finished writing up lesson plans and instructions for the (really wonderful) fellow who is subbing for me tomorrow. I almost couldn’t finish because I just feel so awful, but I made it happen, I am grateful to say.

Still, I have that awful feeling of simply Not Wanting To Go To Bed. Somehow the energy exertion that it will (likely) take to get me up the stairs to brush my teeth just feels like too much. So I decided (here’s how these things happen) to head over to Facebook for just a minute and poke around there. I’m missing people, after all, having been cooped up like this for Days, and Facebook seems like an innocuous (ie., I can’t contaminate anyone) way to say hello.

And here I find an invitation to take a little quiz and “see what kind of flower” I am, and this, too, looks silly and fun and innocuous and a whole lot better than climbing the stairs to bed. But I don’t usually take advantage of these kinds of things because they involve agreeing to steps whose ramifications are Absolutely Unknown to me and besides, once I tried to write on the funwall of one of my students and ended up writing to my Entire List of Friends, Including My Professor, which wasn’t a little bit Mortifiying.

So, I decided to take the flower quiz because heck, what can possibly go wrong. And just like always it asked me to agree to things that I have no idea what they are and I went ahead and agreed because I’m curious. Then I took the test and hated the options (as usual) and then (I hate this, too) had to invite friends to add this application before (Before) I could see the results (what kind of flower I am).

Still, I persisted and sent the invitation along to people at the top of my page and also to Bill because that’s funny (I’ve never thought of him as a flower at all) and then proceeded. And I found the button to click that told me that yes, this next page would produce results, so I clicked it. And here’s what I got:

“Error while loading page from Spring Break Tracker

There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of Spring Break Tracker are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged – if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!”

Right. Like I’ll come back in a few days to find this out. Like I really care. This is fever-endurance here, folks. This is just “I don’t want to go to bed because I’m pretty darned sure I’m going to have nightmares because of the fire in my brain” talking. I don’t care what kind of flower I am. I really don’t.

But if you must know, I think maybe I’m a chameleon. I mean carnation. Or a dandelion. Or an angry circus clown. Or a Japanese beetle. That’s the one.

I don’t think any of those were options.

The post Whatever appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.