Who let the old people on Facebook?

Look, I know I’m not a kid, but I’m not that old, either. And certainly, these social networking websites aren’t intended only for people of one particular age group.

All I know is this whole trend of old people joining these sites needs to stop.

Myspace is one thing with all the weirdos who’ve polluted that, but on Facebook, the only old people I’d previously seen had been college professors, “cool mom” types, and overprotective parents of high schoolers. And I never really gave a crap until this hit home recently:

My mom joined Facebook.

I mean, c’mon… what? Seriously, mom?

Apparently an uncle of mine — whose kids (aka: my cousins) I’m really close to — had joined and sent out a bunch of email friend invitations.

One happened to be to my mom. So, of course, she accepted the invite.

Knowing I was on Facebook based on stuff I’d told her about how I’d gotten back in contact with mad ol’ skool people I used to know, she told me she joined after accepting an invite from my uncle, rather than just going ahead breaking me off a friend request.

I reacted somewhere along the lines of “What!?!? Why?”, which resulted in her telling me that I didn’t have to be her friend. On one hand, I felt bad that I may have offended her, but on the other hand, I don’t want to be her friend.

Dude, she’s my mom.

Sure, I’m an adult, I can do whatever I want, and all that crap, but I don’t need her being in my business. I mean, here’s the kind of stuff I’m trying to avoid in real life:

“Oh, who’s that? She’s cute. Where do you know her from?”

Look, in due time when I land me an awesome woman I feel comfortable letting Momz know about and/or meet, that’ll happen. But in the meantime, I need to do my thing without all the outside prying.

So far the old people have been banding together and haven’t become friends with myself or any of the other cousins in my generation of the family. That’s fine for now, but that particular uncle’s wife – aka my mom’s sister, aka my aunt — hasn’t joined yet.

I love my aunt. A lot. She’s fun, funny, has always been a cool adult type without ever trying too hard by doing things like joining Facebook, and yet she still commands adult-like authority figure respect.

But she’s also got an almost meddlesome curiosity about her, especially when it comes to people in her family. Having her as a friend might actually almost be worse — for the purposes of “the adults” prying and being in my business — than if my mom were my friend.

I’m certain that if she joined Facebook, she, with the intent of bridging the old generation/young generation gap, would friend request everyone on both sides.

At that point, it’s almost certain the dominoes would fall family-wide, where if she friend-requested me I’d have no choice but to accept, and then if I were her friend, I’d have to be my uncle’s friend, and obviously, my mom’s friend.

And then a whole new world of prying and prodding would begin.

Ugh.

I’m getting too old for this. Wait… maybe I’m too old for Facebook?

~ by joshlos on August 7, 2008.