We're not friends anymore (if we ever were)

Well, it's officially that time of year again- Spring.  The time of year traditionally associated with cleaning.  And, since I really don't clean, I sate my biologically driven nesting urges with something a bit more 21st century- weeding out my Facebook friends list.

Sadly yes, folks, it's true- being my friend on Facebook is not 'til death do us part' enterprise.  Once we enter into a Facebook relationship, there is no guarantee that I will abstain from going through my friends list and just dropping fools like dope rhymes.

Yo

Lest you think I am a cold-hearted killer, I want you to know that this was not an easy venture for me.  Anyone who could be eliminated easily is already gone.  Presently, however, I can pretty much look at every name on the list and rationalize them sticking around.  It's probably a good thing I'm not leading a group of survivors during the zombie apocalypse. 

Then again...

Before the chop shop, I was sitting cozy at about 350 friends, which is a decent amount (although nowhere near as high as the lists of some people.  Seriously, how do you even know 1,000+ people?), especially since I pretty much will only be Facebook friends with people who I have at least been friendly with in the past (other than that time when I was playing Madden on Facebook and took in a whole bunch of strangers).  Maybe it was that we hung out a few times, or possibly I worked with you. Perhaps we played together in a band, or on the court. Whatever the case, there was some point when our lives intersected and I thought 'what a nice person- I sure would like to stalk their photos get to know them better'.

But just as a smile from a girl does not mean that she wants to sleep with you (Oh, sorry- spoiler alert to all my teenage boy readers), some fun times are not a compelling reason to keep the fires of friendship burning.  So in the end, 50 people had to go. 50 dreams had to die so that my Facebook friends list could maintain its vibrancy.  Let's take a moment to remember the lives of those Facebook relationshipsOkay, moment's over.

THE PART WHERE I TELL YOU HOW I DID IT

The last time I thinned out the herd, my main deciding factor was my willingness to wish them a happy birthday when prompted by Facebook.  If I took the time, you were in.  If I didn't really care- boom.  You were gone.

Boom

Since then, I have realized that I often ignore Facebook birthday prompts even for people I would genuinely like to wish a happy birthday to, so I had to come up with something else. 

I'd love to sit here and tell you I designed this amazingly awesome formula relying on algorhythms and ratio of likes to comments divided by mutual friends- but that would be something of substance and would set up expectations...and I'm not really ready to go there.  I want you to think I'm stupid so that when I do something not-stupid, you're amazed and give me positive feedback.  Sort of like getting M&M's for going on the potty.

Basically what I did was I went through and figured out why I was friends with somebody, and if it wasn't because we had interacted recently/often or related (or some mystery category that I won't tell you because I'm trying to build suspense for the sequel), then you were probably going to get the axe.  Especially if you fell into one of these categories (Note: Everybody that got cut fell into one of these categories). 

1) We went to high school together.  In a few years, this category will probably be 'We Went To College Together'.  When I first got on Facebook, I wanted to find as many people from high school as I could- not because I missed them or because we were great friends in the first place.  It was pretty much just a relentless sense of curiosity.  'Oh, I wonder how so-and-so is doing'.  'Hmmm, I wonder if blank is married'.  Or, 'Hey, X still owes me money'. 

What I found once I became friends with those people is that after a few initial pleasantries and having all of my questions answered, we almost immediately went back to our previous level of relationshipping- zero. 

See, the reason why I had to wonder what those people were up to is we never communicated after high school.  No phone calls.  No letters.  No e-mails.  Nary even a seance.  Our paths parted, and that was it.  So while I appreciate Facebook helping me to satisfy my thirst for knowledge, I disdain it for making me feel like there was some sort of magical connection between me and some people who I happened to share a geographical boundary with during the formative years of my life than there already wasn't.

2) Savior complex.  This is probably a terrible thing to say, but honestly some of my Facebook friends...well, they were my friends because I felt bad for them.  And maybe that's an altruistic approach- but maybe it's the sign of a real jerk-face.  I don't know.  I've definitely thought about deleting them in the past, but every time I went to delete them, I thought 'awww but they probably don't have any other friends'.  I think this is the same part of the brain that makes people want to keep cats as pets.

Unfortunately, this isn't really a healthy approach to a relationship (Oh, sorry- spoiler alert to everybody).  If you enter into a friendship with such unequal footing, it will probably never develop into an authentic human relationship.  And I'm all about authentic human relationships.  Starting now.

3) People on the extremes of belief.  Many people I know are reasonable people who can look at situations and see the merit in multiple points of view and then make educated decisions for themselves.  I enjoy conversing with these kinds of people.  Not all people can do that though- at least not on Facebook.  However, I didn't eliminate all extremists because extremism in moderation can help you better understand the world around you.  Indeed, the words of the extreme are like a blanket to a baby, if the blanket was also an electrified barbed wire fence.


4) Blog exposure.  This probably seems quite narcissistic, but if you've been here before than surely you know that is sort of my 'thing'.  Besides, can you blame me?  In this day and age, it's all about self-promotion and self-aggrandizement.  What, are people just supposed to judge me based on what I do?  That seems awful petty, don't you think?

But as I press on and on, I realize that I'm not soon to be on the cusp of fame.  I'm not just about to break through.  There are no roles coming up that will launch me into stardom.  I don't have time to devote to being a famous blogger.  I am too busy being a husband/father/provider/Dragonborn. 



WHAT ELSE DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME??????

So really there's no reason to keep stringing people along, pretending to be their Facebook friend (which is kind of like pretending to be a pretend friend) just so that they might see me post a link to my blog.  They'll have to find my blog the same way the rest of the world does- divine intervention.

And that, kids, is the story of how I whittled my Facebook friends list from 350 to 300.  The end.

(For now)

PICS:

Gangsta- http://www.byroncrawford.com/images/nygun.jpg 

Rick- http://blogs.amctv.com/the-walking-dead/Andrew-Lincoln-V2-325.jpg
Volcano- http://www.layoutsparks.com/1/43552/Boom-fire-volcano-layout.html
Dragonborn-https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvpS9qnR_KZq1p4I6ybq7AxBHjW6QuysaMKWIwTDs3dQd8SLVIUywSFQ6MHLV4aTGC83tLlZdK2jAIsI-XNzhBDpvT2N2NzM7fbns2TZj684JgsjB6cmDfyvSqYj6B-qMnfEfA1F0rIeo/s1600/Skyrim+Dragonborn+Dragon+Shout.png

The Skyrim Times- or another possible goose chase.

I have a very ambitious yet fun sounding project in my head. I’m not sure if I’ll go through with it…but the idea tickles me- I want to create an ongoing newspaper for the video game Skyrim.

It’s such a deep, dense game that I’m not sure I could pull it off. It’s definitely not something that I’m going to be starting anytime soon- I’m still playing through Skyrim and I want to beat the game without having to focus on anything else. Ideally I’ll then start it over and start taking notes and whatnot.

In my head, I’m imagining making my character into a captured journalist who escapes from the dragon and makes off to Whiterun. He becomes an investigative reporter for the Whiterun News (or something). I’d write up stories on the silly local shenanigans, with maybe an editorial on the state of affairs in the larger Skyrim, pieces on creatures and plant life, local fare, shopping reviews, and occasional tidbits from the other holds as well. I’m thinking it will be a nice mix of serious information and absurd silliness.

I’m putting this out there to see if anyone would be interested in collaborating with me on this project. I will definitely need some fellow historians- there is such complexity in this game, it’s overwhelming! Articles and headlines will also have to be written. And there are definitely article types (food critic, for example) that I’m not overly familiar with.

If you’re interested, please hit me up on tumblr (http://backwardspants.tumblr.com) or here. I may or may not create a separate tumblr account for this, I’m not sure. But seriously, if this sounds like something you’d be at all interested in collaborating on- even if it’s just to peruse the final product and offer suggestions, that’d be awesome!

PS- For those with a memory of such things, no, I have not forgotten about my Ezio diary project- it's just sitting in the heap with all of the other projects of the moment.  But...it is at the top of that heap and I have put some work into it- so probably by the time Assassins Creed: 8 comes out, it should be ready to go.

Let there be....grass?????

Christmas is tomorrow (already?????) and it looks like it will be a white one...barely.  Seriously, we have less than an inch of snow on the ground and we only have that because of snow fall a couple days ago.  December is a month when the Christmas spirit is supposed to be augmented by the white falling water crystals like how you get the sneak-attack bonus while using an enchanted weapon (sorry...might have been up too late last night playing Skyrim).  Instead, we had to deal with patches of ice and fields of frozen mud and dead grass all month.  How freaking depressing!

At least we have some snow, though.  And I'm hoping that this little tiny snow we have will stay through at least tomorrow.  Unfortunately, tomorrow is supposed to get past the magic number (32) in temperature, and the next day warmer still.  Goodbye snow- I sure will miss you! 

Sadly it seems that my moving to Marquette has effectively killed the Epic Snowstorm industry that I have heard so much about.  I wouldn't be surprised if the six winters I've been up here are the six worst years in terms of accumulated snow fall.  I also wouldn't be surprised if you told me the sun revolves around me.

So in order to keep myself from gluing cotton balls all over the front yard in order to stave off the depression, I've been pondering global warming.  Probably doesn't seem like something you'd want to think about to try and keep from being depressed about the weather, but that's the way my mind works.  I think about global warming, and the effects that it might have on, say, weak snow storms where I'm at and huge snow storms in places that aren't supposed to get huge snow storms.  And now I'm depressed again.  AARRGGHH (runs off to watch Frosty Returns). 

As far as global warming goes, I personally know just enough to have an extremely uninformed opinion, so if you came here looking for the usual wisdom, counsel, and guidance that I usually offer...well then stick around, because that's exactly what you're going to get.  Merry ChristMAS!!!

Admittedly, I should know more about the subject.  But even though I'm (for all intents and purposes, willfully) ignorant,  I do try to do my part to be an ecologically responsible citizen.  I walk to work sometimes (hopefully more frequently when the weather warms up).  I shut lights off in rooms that I'm not in.  I recycle.  I eat cardboard (not true).  Sometimes I even hold my breath- anything to reduce my personal carbon foot print. 

But sometimesI wonder if this climate change is just a natural thing that we're caught in the middle of and global warming is our attempt to understand and make sense of it.  Sure, that's a tremendous simplification.  Still, think about various times in our history when things were drastically different than they are now.  The ice age, for example.  Obviously the Earth was not always covered in ice- it gradually had to change to get that way- except that it's not still covered in ice, so clearly there was another ginormous gradual change.  And yet, here we are today, after all that massive change and the countless tragedies in terms of the loss of plant and animal life.  Ta-da!

Our world today did not just happen like some magical pop-up book.  The world as we know it has been violently shaken and crafted by the impartially cruel forces of nature.  And it will continue to happen, regardless of what we do or don't do.  Maybe global warming, then, is less a 'thing' and more of a label to help us feel like we are at least a little bit in control of things that we are really not in control of at all. 

That doesn't mean that I am advocating for a hummer in every heated garage or loosened smog restrictions.  It bothers me that people are cutting down forests to make golf courses and luxury hotels.  I'm against the blatant misuse of resources.  I have kids, after all, and I would really like them to be able to grow up in a world that more resembles Max and Ruby than it does Mad Max (actually...scratch that, because that would mean that four-foot tall talking female rabbits would be the dominant species). 

For now all I wish is that we could have a white Christmas.  Just like the ones I used to know.