Dear Facebook – I love you and I hate you.
You’re handy, convenient, and always at my fingertips. I use you for remembering people’s names and birthdays (more than once), keeping in touch with friends and family, for a laugh, a cry, a lurk, spy, poke, to joke around, for work, to share a thought, express a feeling, capture a moment, to network, make a statement, and much, much more. You name it, and I can get pretty close to accomplishing it with you. As much as I have enjoyed you over the years, you have become both my friend AND my enemy, and I’ve actually had thoughts of ending my torrid and somewhat psychotic affair with you.
But then I come back in to your welcome arms.
Facebook, you’re too good to leave, and too bad to stay.
Signed,
Soon-to-be-Papa Doug
Ok, I had to get it off my chest. Facebook has been trying my last nerve the last several months. My latest quandary with this social media phenomenon is what I’m calling “baby leakage”. I have to say, I have been very good about keeping our baby plans off of Facebook. The blog is one thing, as we have all benefited from the advice and counsel and heartfelt outpourings from our fellow blog friends...HOWEVER, Facebook is a black hole of nearly 1,000 friends (some who harken back to my kindergarten days). So while I have no problem with these people knowing our plans once our baby is born (or I guess I should say in the “safe zone”), I was not going to share our aches and pains with infertility, our multiple failed attempts, and my bouts with doubting this whole process with every person in my life that I've brushed shoulders with, or that was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. All that juicy stuff is reserved for you guys -- ha!
So anyway...as we slowly start to make our baby plans more and more public in small groups and one-on-one conversations with friends and family, we always remind people "Absolutely, positively, NO Facebook". That, however, seems to be impossible. That urgent need to share information immediately consumes and overcomes people. Alas!...I get a post of “congratulations!” from my niece that I respond to with a smiley face and a “like”. I take it in stride. The post is followed by several “likes” from other people “in-the-know”. I think “am I being paranoid?”. Probably, yes.
And then the day after Christmas my father posts that he’s so excited for his son Doug’s “Good News”. I remember explicitly telling my father "Absolutely, positively, NO Facebook about the baby" -- but apparently the almost 80-year-old has selective hearing. And so I didn’t comment, just let it sit there in cyberspace. And then a mutual friend posts on my wall “I want to know the good news!”…DARN! And so I text them, in my attempt to circumvent the omnipresent Facebook to avoid further leakage, "we’re not posting this on Facebook but…blah blah blah…we’re having a baby in May”. They’re excited, congratulate us. I wait a little longer and there seems to be no more fall out…and then I think, “Am I being outed by Facebook???” AM I being paranoid? Probably, yes.
So Mark Zuckerberg, while you’re making it very hard for us to avoid a big splashy baby announcement on my Facebook Timeline (that is what you’re calling it now, right?), please…have no fear because I know, in the not-so-distant future, we’ll cave and start letting people in on it, using your awesome power of information dissemination to mark the day and every day forward that our adorable little angel has changed our lives forever. And then, only then, will I consider taking you off my "sometimes" enemy status.
