Social Networking

It is a little hard to know what to make of the social networking trend. Even the word/phrase leaves me some puzzled. There used to be something called networking that meant you talked to friends to find out if they knew where there were any jobs available. It was a straightforward, I don’t know about any jobs open, but I can talk to my friend A who, if she doesn’t know of any, will talk to her friend B, whom I don’t know, and so forth, indicating that the point of this networking is for me to get access to people/information beyond my normal job knowledge reach.

But exactly why I would want to get beyond my normal social reach is not entirely clear to me. After 8 decades, I’m pretty well socialed up, although I suppose my cohort will be dying off at an ever-more-rapid pace so I’ll soon be needing to replace those early departers. (Alternatively, I won’t need to be replacing anything because I am become the early departer.) Is Facebook going to help me with that?

When I look at the early results of being on Facebook, I’m not entirely persuaded that this is going to help on any front. My 14-year-old granddaughter’s newest ‘friending’ on that site is now being offered up unto me as a possible friend. (Actually, I think they need to find a different word for this…a forefriend? A fu-friend (as in the future friend)? A maybe friend?) I ask myself, do I want a 15-year-old boy from central California as a friend? I must say that only on Facebook would such a question even arise. I think the answer is probably no, but nothing personal, I would assure him if I ever had him around to assure him of anything.

A few months ago, I was playing heated internet chess with an 11-year-old I had never met who came very close to beating me several games in a row. Fortunately for the team (that would be the team of ME), I managed to pull those games out even after being behind in at least one or two of them. While I was playing those games, I was so involved in the game that I would awake in the middle of the night and start visualizing the board and suddenly become convinced that I had made a fatefully bad move, get out of bed, get the computer up, only to discover that I had not visualized it quite correctly. Not surprising, because I don’t actually have much sense of what things look like if I’m not actually looking at them. Anyway, I had the feeling that he and I, the two of us, were both intensely involved in these games, even though we never exchanged a word other than the customary thanks at the end of the game. I used to imagine that someday, I would meet him, and he would realize that I was an old lady and I would see that he was really an 11-year-old boy, and we would both be astonished because we had seemed such equals during the game.

So maybe that’s what social networking has to offer? That feeling of having things in common, even if it’s only my 14-year-old granddaughter? Maybe I ought to ask her friend if he plays chess?