The Realm of the Near-Friend

            My mother-in-law, a few friends from high school, my niece, two (or three? actually three) ex-boyfriends, friends from graduate school, friends from Romania, from Buffalo, Michigan, and Houston, my husband, a couple of students, some of my husband’s friends, a few colleagues from work, what do they all have in common? They’re my friends on Facebook.

            What? Under normal circumstances, my mother, who married her high school sweetheart, should never see two, not to mention three, of my ex-boyfriends in the same context (she knows them). I imagine them in the same room, what would they talk about?

            But it doesn’t matter: on Facebook, we’re all near-friends. It’s the endless happy ending: I loved his person when I was in my twenties, we argued and fought and betrayed one another, and now we’re friends on Facebook. Or: this is a person I met at a party and thought she was smart and it would be fun to talk more with her. Or: I cheated on this person, he liked me a lot, and now we’re friends on Facebook. Some of my students are my friends on Facebook (mercifully, not many), what must they be thinking of me? My mother is my friend on Facebook: I love her now and I used to seriously hate her when I was in my twenties. Or: this co-worker tried to hit on me and she was so damn neurotic that when I wasn’t too welcoming she ruined one of my projects, but somehow we ended up on Facebook together and now we’re friends.

            On Facebook, we’re all polite: no dislike button. No love button either. This may have something to do with the atmosphere of an elite college, which is where it all started; its ethos shapes the options that we have (the like button) and how we interact. We don’t hate each other, we don’t absolutely love each other, we’re all smart and cool and noncommittal and passive aggressive and we write well. Mr. Zuckerberg, please go to grad school at least.

            On Facebook, we don’t betray one another: how could we? We’re all friends, no strings attached. We’re actually not friends-friends, which back home used to mean a rather small circle of confidantes, we’re not the high school gang either, we’re not acquaintances. We’re near-friends. In real life, real friends betray one another, are annoying, call at the wrong time, borrow money and don’t return it, flirt with your significant other. They can’t do that on Facebook. They can’t be extremely generous or hug you. They say “that’s so funny” instead. They’re near-friends.

            On the other hand, for someone who’s moved around a lot, being near-friends is much better than completely slipping into oblivion. It’s the equivalent of old handwritten letters, which announced births deaths weddings and other relevant matters, except that now, stuck into the ethos of twenty-something college kids, we communicate where we travel, what we see, what we cooked yesterday etc. –what we “experience”—and we hope that we can continue the polite and funny conversation we started a few years ago with someone in Grand Rapids, Michigan.