The Child doesn’t like Facebook much, and I confess, my enthusiasm for it has waned over time. Most of the posts that I see these days can be classified as image-crafting or over-sharing, unless of course they’re political, or sometimes, all of the above. The people I’d like to hear from rarely post, and I find if I want to talk with them I end up messaging them privately, or just picking up the phone.
Still, I check in to Facebook regularly, not wanting to miss something important or interesting.
What’s interesting is never what’s in the posts, but if you look closely, you can sometimes see what isn’t in them. A photographer friend of mine posts stunning pictures of her beautiful baby and odes to her wonderful husband, but has not posted a photo of herself since her wedding five years ago. The last time I saw her in person – over a decade ago – she was struggling with her weight. I smile, sympathize silently, and scroll on.
Another friend has lived a seemingly charmed life since the day I met her – born to a wealthy and accomplished family, married into the same – and carefully tends the family image on Facebook. She posts neatly staged photos of a perfectly groomed family group, and I wonder quietly why all her children seem to have someone except the eldest boy, until the day I accidentally run across a newspaper article about his arraignment for assaulting a woman in a bar late one night.
Denials appear in newspapers, but the Facebook feed is mute. I sympathize sadly, talk about it offline with a mutual friend, and scroll on.
The Child finds it all pointless, though she has Instagram and Snapchat and some other app I don’t remember the name of but which she swears is far more interesting. Still, unlike at least one of her friends, she hasn’t closed her Facebook account completely. I notice she logs in once in a while, sometimes late at night.
Neither of us mentions it.
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