Facebook Filters

Okay, so I have to share something that popped up on a friend's facebook update this afternoon, it's a  mom filter for facebook .  I suspect that my kids would really like this, since I am one of those pain-in-the-ass moms who comments when her kids say something inappropriate. I feel really grateful that I haven't been unfriended by them yet!  My mom is also on facebook, but she's never actually ON, so I tend to forget to watch myself, not that it matters, because she's pretty cool.  My mother-in-law hasn't signed up yet. My sister-in-law keeps trying to talk her into it, but really, let's not encourage that. I would friend her, of course, and then I would forget she's there and say something about that time in college, when The Big Guy and I...well, you know.  I would have to de-friend all the rest of my family, because I would have to expand my "no friending of  students or coworkers" rule to include family.  And then how would I know what time Thanksgiving dinner is, since noone ever sends me a real email (or God forbid, a phone call)?

And while I'm thinking about Facebook, don't you just love that the word "friend" is now a verb?  Do you think that Facebook has devalued friendship?  I mean, if you have 4,564 friends, how can you ever have a birthday party?  You'd feel terrible for not inviting all of your friends, but there is no way you could say, "Hey, only friends #1-76 are invited".  Maybe Facebook needs to have an inner circle level of friendship.  Then you can have a "Friends who only like me because I'll be their neighbor in Farmville" category, too.

I friended some of my son's friends because they play Farmville (from which I have retired.  I was getting out of bed at 3 a.m. to harvest virtual carrots so I could buy more green chickens) and I wanted them for neighbors.  My kids were appalled, and I had to make sure I emailed their mother so she wouldn't have me arrested for cougar-osity.   I have to work really hard to pretend not to read what they are posting, because I can't unfriend them.  That would be rude.