Facebook

Within days of creating my Facebook page this past March, a guy named Damon Addison requested my friendship. I don't know Damon and rejected his solicitation, and with some contempt too – I mean, the chutzpah of a total stranger asking ME to be HIS friend. In an ironic if not utterly hypocritical metamorphosis, two months later I had become that very same guy – on steroids, earnestly affiliating with as many facebookers as would indulge me, however tenuous the connection. How did I mutate from detached amusement to headlong embrace? This is my story.

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More than detached, I initially regarded Facebook and its social networking sisters with suspicion and disdain, viewing them as trite playgrounds for teens and twenty-somethings, apparently with too much time on their hands. I diagnosed them as symptoms of a callow and voyeuristic culture and even assigned to their acolytes an effete if unfair stereotype - you know, that of metrosexuals texting from iphones while sipping lattes.
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Though a healthy dose of skepticism may be in order, some of my condescension also arose from my own discomfort with new technologies and unfamiliar platforms. I'm not what they call an "early adapter" but quite the opposite - I used the same cell phone for nearly a decade. Whatever the roots of my initial hesitancy - indignation or fear, the utility of Facebook eventually felled both.
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For the uninitiated, FB permits fellow users to befriend you as you allow. As you've already seen, I originally took the word "friend" at face value, prompting regular struggles over whether to accept certain invitations. Even if I knew the person, I might not like them so much, may not have seen them in twenty years, etc. In short, they weren't really friends at all, and like my touchstone Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, I do not well suffer disingenuity and viewed many such invitations as precisely that.
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I soon realized I was applying a more rigorous definition of "friend" than may have been intended - a discovery that would prime my Facebook engine. And as soon as I internalized the potential business applications, the floodgates opened. Unsure whether on-line networking is simply fad or seismic shift in the way people and organizations promote themselves, I bowed to the mammon god, and with missionary-like zeal began sharing the gospel of Evins Mill throughout the FB matrix.
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As of this writing I have accumulated nearly 500 "friends." Of these, the overwhelming majority are patrons of Evins Mill, most of whom I've not met in person, and some not at all. At times I fear I've spoiled some unspoken and hallowed protocol, or offended the Facebook pure of heart with this commercially driven quest. If so, I empathize and take no offense should you part my company.
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While the FB faithful, and even I, may be uneasy with this construct, I am proceeding with all the authenticity that I can muster - and that our guests deserve. With tempered regularity, I share with my "friends" items I hope are of value or substance, whether it be an additional discount for a "fan," recipes from Chef Evans, a lovely picture - or an essay like this one. That many "friends" seem to receive these posts with genuine warmth and appreciation has increasingly allowed me to share them with a more genuine heart and from a more authentic place.
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Authenticity aside - Damon, if you'll give me a second chance, I'd like to be your friend now.