I find it so incredibly fascinating that those who have come of age in the dawn of social media will never lose touch with...anyone...that they've ever met. Pretty much anyway. Oh sure, you might unfriend someone in a fit of irrational slash and burn, or maybe jump ship on your MySpace to hang with other Facebook social climbers, but really - you are at most two clicks away from finding them again. It makes "six degrees of separation" seem almost precious, doesn't it?
So what does that look like ten years from now?
Well, for starters, will people even bother going to their twenty-year reunion? I just went to mine and I can honestly say Facebook is the only reason I went. I had just reconnected with some long lost friends - including my BFF - that I am ashamed to say I lost 20 years with because of a stupid falling out over a stupid boy that neither of us can remember his last name. It is one of those things that I know we would have gotten past, but BAM! we graduated, I left home, I think she moved and we just...lost touch with each other. I tried to explain this to some of my husband's students (he's a university prof.) and they just could not compute this. A time before e-mail, a time before Facebook, a time before putting cell phone numbers in your phone - hell, even the old bag-style, plug-in-the-cig-lighter "car phones" still wouldn't be invented for at least five more years from when we graduated.
But I digress. Which, I should warn you - I do a lot. Deal with it.
What was I rambling on about? Oh yeah...so right now, I'll bet if someone studies % of attendance for 20-year reunions it would be peaking right now. But will kids who have always had access to their entire graduating class care about seeing them in person?
But here's the really sad part. I think it is safe to say that all of us pre-social network folks harbor a deep-seated fantasy that everyone we ever dated is secretly pining for us, the one that got away. I like to think that those I dated and parted ways with, amicably or not, knows deep down that I truly was the best thing that ever happened to them and that they blew it. And that knowledge has haunted them to the extent that they have lost all drive to succeed or to Ever Love Again. Mind you, it's not that I would ever want them back - I think we all just want to feel like we mattered...that we had an effect...made a lasting impression. These are the little stories we construct for ourselves.
But for all my young friends...the proof that your ex moved on is everywhere. Even if you unfriend him, he may still pop up when he comments on a mutual friend's wall. And when she changes her profile picture to that "really cute" pic of the two of them together (OMG!) it's just rubbing your nose in it, isn't it?
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