At the time I did not realize that I was witnessing the birth of social-networking (as it was knon then).....I might actually have even paid the $$ premium to be notified if anyone else from my high school joined... at the time we had'nt even had our 10 year reunion yet but I paid it, made a profile and actually found a couple of people....I finally unsubscribed from their email updates about a year ago....(do they not know about Facebook!?!?). Deep in my heart I kinda had this ideal mental scenario where every friend that I ever lost or lost touch with after high school somehow made his/her way back into my life. It might have been a prophetic thought...I would have to wait about 7 more years before my friend Heather (then Hiers) Shelton would introduce me to MySpace.....truth be told, at this point I had kinda lost the "vision" for what once excited me about what would come to be known as Social networking.....I definitely fell into the category of people that rolled his eyes for a while and said that this was a waste of time and another avenue for "online Hookups" as well as "spam highways"................well although technically I wasn't wrong, it would'nt be for another year or so until I would join MySpace and it would really become a part of my social M.O. and I would understand that social media was just another major landmark on the human timeline of communication. It took me a while to remember that MySpace (and Facebook for college kids only then) was just another medium of communication much like the Telephone, the telegraph, the carrier pigeon, and smoke signals....... basically, another way of communicating using the tools of the times.
It took me a little while to even connect the dots that I was sitting on the front row of the perfecting of the technology that I'd been teased with 7 years earlier for about $40 a month.....(which I dropped after about 4 months).....I did the MySpace thing for a while finding a whole lot of creative expression in decorating my page and really expressing myself through it.......found a lot of friends from high school and beyond....BUT...........what happenned the summer of 2008 was unbelieveable.....in a matter of 2 months I'd reconnected with about 70% of just about anyone that I ever cared to reconnect with from my youth...
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that my age demographic, those who graduated high school somewhere between 1987 and 1994 were the first to TRULY get the full benefits of social networking....let me elaborate.
If you look at the age brackets of the users as well as time frame of events in general you will find that those who graduated slightly earlier than1987 were among the "older" crowd that was intimidated by the internet boon....and while they've obviously caught up by now.....it took them longer to lose that intimidation........those who graduated after that were more than likely still finishing college, thriving in their post highschool/college social circles, and the nostalgia of fleeting youth had not hit them full-force yet.............my demographic? we had settled down, we were starting families, paying off student loans and meeting life head-on......we had started to get nostalgic......enough time had passed since high school to honestly and truly wonder......"I wonder whatever happened to .......". All of a sudden we had the opportunity to have "fun high school" all over again........without the school work to get in the way of our socializing, without our parents to tell us it was a school night......without even having to leave the privacy of our homes.........and unfortunately sometimes, without an authority to tell us what was and is acceptable behavior!!
Almost as if a living and breathing organism came to life....Facebook squashed MySpace..... seemingly overnight!! it was amazing how it went viral.....a few weeks and you were interacting with hundreds of people that you had not seen in 10 to 15 years!!!!! it was literally MONTHS of catching up....the IM windows were working overtime!................
it was SUCH an AMAZING experiment in human behavior. Allow me to share a couple of anecdotes.
ROMANCE
All the "unfinished business" of highschool flared up....I heard of a bunch of marriages that became strained (or a few even terminated) because someone from high school was all of a sudden back in a spouses' life...a few even left their husbands/wives for unfinished high school romance! for another shot at the one who got away...
All of a sudden the grown up boys and girls who were too scared or insecure to have ever made professions of affection to classmates in the teen years were all of a sudden saying...."hey I never told you this but I used to like you SO much in highschool....but I'm telling you now"
People were trying to rekindle highschool love all over the place... these are just the people I knew of....imagine the numbers world wide!!!
PLASTIC
Then there was the demographic that felt the need to prove to us all how financially successful they were... pictures of cars and fancy attire and mansions......there were obviously those who DID in fact do well for themselves and they were just being their successful selves......nothing wrong with that.....but then there were the others........mercifully that kind of behavior gets boring and that ended a few weeks into that summer.
Some of the girls (and guys) could not bring themselves to face their fellow ex-classmates because they had gained weight or gotten a few wrinkles on them.....some sadly to this day still wont post pictures of themselves, for this reason!! (again, I could but never will, name names)
OLD SCORES TO SETTLE
Man! People can hold grudges !! you have no idea how many times I heard friends of mine say....."I wish he/she would try that (@#^*) now!!!" .............or........"he's lost his hair and gotten fat....." or ......"pop out a couple of kids and you're not so hot anymore are you sweetheart?..............all of a sudden a lot of us found out that we were still carrying around some unresolved anger issues, that we had either felt that we had been or actually had been bullied in some capacity during our school years, and in a couple of occasions (that I'm privy to), I heard of friends of mine sending MySpace and Facebook messages that read "you hurt me but I'd like to see you try to hurt me now" or things to that effect.
I actually remember that summer after a particular girl joined Facebook, someone commenting ...."Well Jane Doe (name withheld) is on Facebook now....let's have highschool again.
SURPRISES
Then there was the flip side of the coin.......people who reached out to other people and out right said "look, I was a total jerk in school......I wanna tell you that I'm so sorry for that...." .......I personally actually got a couple of those.....and they were appreciated.
"OH! so and so is gay!??..........oh I totally did NOT see that coming!!!" OR "duh!! we all knew that"
"so and so is doing WHAT with his life!?!?!?!? are you kidding me!? he was such a slacker in school!!! good for him/her!!!" OR ".....that ticks me off!!! I studied so much harder than him/her"...........again, I heard both!!
Perhaps the dearest surprises to me personally came in the manner of some people who I was distantly acquainted with in school that on this side of Facebook and (the dark ages before it) have become essential friends that I cannot imagine my life without............a few come to mind and I'll only name Donna Brown because in naming more people I'll leave someone out and offend everyone.......Donna has become one of my best friends in the whole world and we've both weathered some very tough times in our lives together via COUNTLESS hours on the phone over the last few years.....she's an amazing woman and I'm so proud of her for all that she is and continues to become............
And there are SO many others.....people that I knew but didn't necessarily consider close friends until now because on this side of life they cared to reach out or reach back when I reached out to them..........ironically and sadly enough many of them I've not seen for 22 years or as is the case with Donna....just once since then.
Back before social networks, when you finished highschool you were mature and old enough to know that for many many many of your friendships this was in fact "the end".......this generation will never know that feeling... my generation DID.........................and the web gave them back to us from the unknown. Social networking has taken me back to experience all of the above to some degree or another, from romance to drama, from births to deaths, from hapiness to mourning..........all I know is that now my life is richer and fuller for having been given my old world............to complete the one that I built after high school. Much love!
~Rudy
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