Given that I have been on Facebook for probably five years now it is pretty amazing to see how it has impacted my life. To be honest I am not a very active user. Sure when I started I took full advantage of Facebook chat and games of Scrabulous (which was Words with Friends for people who lacked words or, uh, friends) and would regularly update my status. Now, other than the occasional status containing a really bad pun I now am more of a Facebook lurker than anything else. Kim still feels I waste too much time on it but there is an aspect to it that I find fascinating. Facebook has resulted in everyone having a Virtual Homeroom.
Look at your Facebook friends and see how many of them are from grade school or high school. Given that I switched grade schools when I was ten I literally have Facebook friends who I have not seen or spoken to in thirty years yet I get regular updates on their life. Every morning I check the news feed and I listen to the background chatter of people who I knew but don’t really know. To be honest this is exactly what high school was like for me. I knew everyone in the room but I’m not sure if I really had a clue what any of them were about.
Yet homeroom in high school plays a huge role in your life and I swear to this day that I have dreams relating to high school and homeroom. It was where you heard the daily gossip and complaints and news of the day. Nothing really happened but you saw the cliques form and alliances dissolve and friendships and relationships morph daily. It was a place where a group of people gathered for fifteen minutes a day for no reason other than circumstance brought them together.
When I first started thinking about this I started to wonder if it would be good if you had homeroom throughout your entire life. Imagine every workday you met in a room with people, some of whom you would never see again that day, and hear the daily announcements and get the updates on the day. I guess we would now host it in a Starbucks as I couldn’t see surviving that atmosphere without coffee but I started to envision what it would be like to just have that daily gathering. Over time as people moved about they would switch homerooms and others would join in just like when you had the new kid in school. The daily drama of homeroom would play out throughout adulthood. I still don’t know if that would be a good thing or not.
But the more I thought about it the more I realized that is entirely what Facebook is. There is no substance there. You can state your political opinions or your theoretically funny shared greeting cards or spam game requests but for the most part none of it actually matters. It is just a spattering of gossip and clans and complaints about life. It really is the same as homeroom and it is now permanent. You can’t escape the people you happened to meet when you were nine years old. They now follow you for the rest of your life. It scares me as to how this will affect kids today. I know I spent a good portion of high school wanting to just get beyond this incredibly awkward point of my life. Now you never get to leave.
Wednesday Night Music Club: I am not sure which of the old blog standards are going to survive into this new format but this one probably will. Besides, I would have to share this performance by Beth Orton with everyone anyway. This is her song Magpie off of her latest album (CD? iTunes release? What the hell do we call new music now?) When I first saw this I was just floored. Something about repeating the line “What a lie looks like” with that slightly flawed voice of hers just stopped me in my tracks.
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Returning to Blogging Duty
So it has been a few weeks since I last wrote. Three if my math is right, which would make this by far the longest break I’ve taken from blogging and writing in general in five years. First off, thanks to those who got in touch with me to check that everything is ok. I know that for some people my blog has been the best way to keep up with what I am doing and it has become so routine that not writing has been a signal that something has gone wrong. That wasn’t the case this time.
It’s weird to say that my life has gotten busy but in a way that is the best way to put it. I just have more on my plate now between time with Kim and taking care of things for work and all of the other aspects of life. I’ve also been traveling a ton and it has just taken a toll on me. The last few weeks all I wanted to do when I got home was maybe do a little reading, a little work on the jigsaw puzzle and sleep. I’m sorry for the lack of posts but my body and mind needed some time away from writing about Lindsay Lohan hitting a baby with her car.
(I think we’ve reached the point where we can use the term “Menace to Society” with regards to her.)
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this idea for the past few days and figured that it would be a good first topic back. Kim makes fun of me for the amount of time that I spend on Facebook and I have to admit that it is a rather strange obsession of mine. Now to be honest I don’t really do much on Facebook and I do significantly less than I did a year or two ago. I don’t update my status unless I can think of a really good pun, I haven’t uploaded pictures in years and I accept friend requests whenever I am bored enough to deal with it. Really all I do is login and look at everyone else’s status updates.
When you think of it that is a really odd, voyeuristic thing to do. Like most people, my Facebook friends are not my friends at all. Or at least a significant portion of them are not. Sure, they may have been friends at one point in my life but in some cases that was decades ago. In some cases I can’t even say that we ever were friends; we just happen to have some shared experiences based mainly on geography. Yet every day I check to see what they are doing. I know their jobs, the names of their children, and where they went on vacation. I know all of this despite the fact that for all intensive purposes these people are complete strangers to me.
What is more unusual and disconcerting is this is the same for all of us. Essentially everyone is on Facebook now and your life is on display for the world to see. We have reached a point where there is almost no such thing as private information anymore. We’ve listed everything in our profile and by detailing the minutiae of our life in status updates and Twitter posts and Flickr feeds people who don’t know us know everything about us. It’s a rather frightening thought. We have all become infinitely more social without actually talking to anyone.
This is probably strange coming from someone who in two months will be celebrating the six year anniversary of this blog. I can’t say that it wasn’t a factor in taking a little break from writing. Putting yourself out there every day for the world to see is a rather daunting thought. What does it really mean to know that in the last year someone from Iran has read my blog or that I have a relatively large number of visitors from Norway? Is it a loss of privacy or a way, as minor as it may be, to put my voice out there in the world?
I have a feeling that will be one of the subjects I will be grappling with over the next year. I’m going to keep writing because I feel better when I write and if I write I might as well blog. But I’m not sure what direction this is going to take. The days of writing about bar stories are behind me. Now I just have to figure out what is in front of me.
The five random CDs for the week (which had also been on a bit of a vacation):
1) Aimee Mann “I’m With Stupid”
2) R.E.M. “Murmur:
3) The Iguanas “Plastic Silver Nine Volt Heart”
4) Alejandro Escovedo “Thirteen Years”
5) Jay Bennett “Bigger than Blue”
It’s weird to say that my life has gotten busy but in a way that is the best way to put it. I just have more on my plate now between time with Kim and taking care of things for work and all of the other aspects of life. I’ve also been traveling a ton and it has just taken a toll on me. The last few weeks all I wanted to do when I got home was maybe do a little reading, a little work on the jigsaw puzzle and sleep. I’m sorry for the lack of posts but my body and mind needed some time away from writing about Lindsay Lohan hitting a baby with her car.
(I think we’ve reached the point where we can use the term “Menace to Society” with regards to her.)
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this idea for the past few days and figured that it would be a good first topic back. Kim makes fun of me for the amount of time that I spend on Facebook and I have to admit that it is a rather strange obsession of mine. Now to be honest I don’t really do much on Facebook and I do significantly less than I did a year or two ago. I don’t update my status unless I can think of a really good pun, I haven’t uploaded pictures in years and I accept friend requests whenever I am bored enough to deal with it. Really all I do is login and look at everyone else’s status updates.
When you think of it that is a really odd, voyeuristic thing to do. Like most people, my Facebook friends are not my friends at all. Or at least a significant portion of them are not. Sure, they may have been friends at one point in my life but in some cases that was decades ago. In some cases I can’t even say that we ever were friends; we just happen to have some shared experiences based mainly on geography. Yet every day I check to see what they are doing. I know their jobs, the names of their children, and where they went on vacation. I know all of this despite the fact that for all intensive purposes these people are complete strangers to me.
What is more unusual and disconcerting is this is the same for all of us. Essentially everyone is on Facebook now and your life is on display for the world to see. We have reached a point where there is almost no such thing as private information anymore. We’ve listed everything in our profile and by detailing the minutiae of our life in status updates and Twitter posts and Flickr feeds people who don’t know us know everything about us. It’s a rather frightening thought. We have all become infinitely more social without actually talking to anyone.
This is probably strange coming from someone who in two months will be celebrating the six year anniversary of this blog. I can’t say that it wasn’t a factor in taking a little break from writing. Putting yourself out there every day for the world to see is a rather daunting thought. What does it really mean to know that in the last year someone from Iran has read my blog or that I have a relatively large number of visitors from Norway? Is it a loss of privacy or a way, as minor as it may be, to put my voice out there in the world?
I have a feeling that will be one of the subjects I will be grappling with over the next year. I’m going to keep writing because I feel better when I write and if I write I might as well blog. But I’m not sure what direction this is going to take. The days of writing about bar stories are behind me. Now I just have to figure out what is in front of me.
The five random CDs for the week (which had also been on a bit of a vacation):
1) Aimee Mann “I’m With Stupid”
2) R.E.M. “Murmur:
3) The Iguanas “Plastic Silver Nine Volt Heart”
4) Alejandro Escovedo “Thirteen Years”
5) Jay Bennett “Bigger than Blue”
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Mind your online manners
Without laws we have anarchy. I don’t care what anyone says in that if we are all placed on an island paradise that we would naturally live in harmony. In that case it is only a matter of time before we all gang up on the fat kid with glasses. This is as true in the online world as in reality. Hence, I feel that it is my duty to set up some ground rules for proper Facebook usage.
Now I’ve been on Facebook for a little more than a year now after fleeing MySpace due to an abundance of friend requests from half naked women who were rather enthusiastic in my meeting them via their webcam at an acceptable rate. And I have to say that I was a huge fan of Facebook last year especially given that I was unemployed for most of it. At the start every single person on my friend list was someone that I actually knew well. As time passed I started having people from high school find me and that was rather cool to start. But then suddenly more and more of my past became a part of my friend list. People who I haven’t spoken to in twenty years, people who weren’t my friends when I actually knew them, heck, people I don’t think I actually ever knew are now all part of my online life. And thanks to Facebook I get to hear about every single thing they ever do.
So for the sanity of myself and others I would like to propose the following rules regarding proper Facebook etiquette.
Rule # 1: No one cares about the quiz you just took: For the love of God, I really could care less what Breakfast Club character you are most like, or when some internet program says that you are going to die or any other stupid quiz that you are taking and then telling me about. Not only is it not telling me anything about you but it is making me think less of you as a human being. See, instead of determining who you are through reflection and introspection you are relying on badly phrased internet quizzes with a pop culture glaze. After a certain age (meaning anyone who is not technically a sixteen year old girl) you should not be taking these quizzes and certainly not discussing them in public. It just shows that you have nothing better to do with your free time.
Rule # 2: I care slightly more about your top five but not much: I actually can find it interesting when people list their five favorite movies or tv shows or sport teams. I have that in my profile and can’t blame others for doing it as well. However, if you are going to unleash your top five on the rest of your friend list please actually list five distinct items. If you are going to list your five favorite sports teams and list the Cubs for all of them I am going to have negative feelings towards you due to a) your lack of creativity and b) your support of a bad franchise.
Rule # 3: If you are going to write a note, write an actual note: This has actually died down in recent weeks now that the 25 Random Things meme has run its course. I still however see people filling out strange online forms and forwarding it to everyone else in an attempt to blog without doing any of the actual work. See, writing notes is meant to be a substitute for writing a blog and those of us in the blogging community like to have standards. Not very high, as anyone who has followed this site for the four and a half years it has been running will surely know, but we do have standards. Just be yourself and write what you are thinking and what you want to express. It is much more interesting than whatever quiz you are filling out. That is why the 25 Random Things were interesting; you had to actually think for a minute before writing them.
Rule # 4: If you wouldn’t recognize me if I passed you on the street, don’t tag me in a picture: I put this rule in due to the fact that I spent a portion of last week looking at a coworker’s pictures from her senior prom. I wasn’t searching these out; they were actually on my Facebook front page. She didn’t post them but she was tagged in them. Everyone needs to remember that your social circle on Facebook contains friends and family and coworkers and more than a few bosses. It is rather disconcerting to know that everyone you know can see what you looked like at a time in your life that you would rather forget. So think before you tag.
Rule # 5: Facebook status updates should either be informative or funny: Meaning I want to either a) know what you are doing right now or b) get a chuckle out of your one liner. I do not want to hear about your political leanings or deal with profanity laden tirades. Again, some of us are on Facebook at work so watch the language. I do my best to aim for pun laden humor and if you are going to force others to know about every moment of your life you should at least make it interesting. Caveat: promoting your blog is always acceptable on Facebook especially in an effort to get one more comment on your page.
Just five rules. Please abide by them or otherwise Facebook will become Friendster in six months. I think it is already on its way there.
Your musical selection for the night: Typically I do Best of 120 Minutes here but this song is so awesome that I have to post it now. Jack White is beginning to sell me on his genius.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Drovers “Kill Mice Elf”
2) Veruca Salt “American Thighs”
3) Bruce Springsteen “Human Touch”
4) Uncle Tupelo “89/93 An Anthology”
5) Lyle Lovett “I Love Everybody”
Now I’ve been on Facebook for a little more than a year now after fleeing MySpace due to an abundance of friend requests from half naked women who were rather enthusiastic in my meeting them via their webcam at an acceptable rate. And I have to say that I was a huge fan of Facebook last year especially given that I was unemployed for most of it. At the start every single person on my friend list was someone that I actually knew well. As time passed I started having people from high school find me and that was rather cool to start. But then suddenly more and more of my past became a part of my friend list. People who I haven’t spoken to in twenty years, people who weren’t my friends when I actually knew them, heck, people I don’t think I actually ever knew are now all part of my online life. And thanks to Facebook I get to hear about every single thing they ever do.
So for the sanity of myself and others I would like to propose the following rules regarding proper Facebook etiquette.
Rule # 1: No one cares about the quiz you just took: For the love of God, I really could care less what Breakfast Club character you are most like, or when some internet program says that you are going to die or any other stupid quiz that you are taking and then telling me about. Not only is it not telling me anything about you but it is making me think less of you as a human being. See, instead of determining who you are through reflection and introspection you are relying on badly phrased internet quizzes with a pop culture glaze. After a certain age (meaning anyone who is not technically a sixteen year old girl) you should not be taking these quizzes and certainly not discussing them in public. It just shows that you have nothing better to do with your free time.
Rule # 2: I care slightly more about your top five but not much: I actually can find it interesting when people list their five favorite movies or tv shows or sport teams. I have that in my profile and can’t blame others for doing it as well. However, if you are going to unleash your top five on the rest of your friend list please actually list five distinct items. If you are going to list your five favorite sports teams and list the Cubs for all of them I am going to have negative feelings towards you due to a) your lack of creativity and b) your support of a bad franchise.
Rule # 3: If you are going to write a note, write an actual note: This has actually died down in recent weeks now that the 25 Random Things meme has run its course. I still however see people filling out strange online forms and forwarding it to everyone else in an attempt to blog without doing any of the actual work. See, writing notes is meant to be a substitute for writing a blog and those of us in the blogging community like to have standards. Not very high, as anyone who has followed this site for the four and a half years it has been running will surely know, but we do have standards. Just be yourself and write what you are thinking and what you want to express. It is much more interesting than whatever quiz you are filling out. That is why the 25 Random Things were interesting; you had to actually think for a minute before writing them.
Rule # 4: If you wouldn’t recognize me if I passed you on the street, don’t tag me in a picture: I put this rule in due to the fact that I spent a portion of last week looking at a coworker’s pictures from her senior prom. I wasn’t searching these out; they were actually on my Facebook front page. She didn’t post them but she was tagged in them. Everyone needs to remember that your social circle on Facebook contains friends and family and coworkers and more than a few bosses. It is rather disconcerting to know that everyone you know can see what you looked like at a time in your life that you would rather forget. So think before you tag.
Rule # 5: Facebook status updates should either be informative or funny: Meaning I want to either a) know what you are doing right now or b) get a chuckle out of your one liner. I do not want to hear about your political leanings or deal with profanity laden tirades. Again, some of us are on Facebook at work so watch the language. I do my best to aim for pun laden humor and if you are going to force others to know about every moment of your life you should at least make it interesting. Caveat: promoting your blog is always acceptable on Facebook especially in an effort to get one more comment on your page.
Just five rules. Please abide by them or otherwise Facebook will become Friendster in six months. I think it is already on its way there.
Your musical selection for the night: Typically I do Best of 120 Minutes here but this song is so awesome that I have to post it now. Jack White is beginning to sell me on his genius.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Drovers “Kill Mice Elf”
2) Veruca Salt “American Thighs”
3) Bruce Springsteen “Human Touch”
4) Uncle Tupelo “89/93 An Anthology”
5) Lyle Lovett “I Love Everybody”
Monday, January 26, 2009
People who at one point knew me
I hate to inform everyone about this but Facebook is no longer cool. See, like all cutting edge technologies there is a tipping point in which it becomes so popular that it ceases being cool. Based on the fact now that it is odd for me to find someone not on Facebook I really feel that the point has been crossed. However, as opposed to the Friendsters and MySpaces of the world Facebook is still really, really useful so I expect it to hang around for a long while. I’ll stay on it; I just won’t feel hip and cutting edge for doing so.
(And before you ask, no I am not setting up a twitter feed. If you’ve read this site for any length of time the concept of me writing anything meaningful in 150 characters is pretty ludicrous.)
But there is something about Facebook that has really been bugging me and I just have to get it off my chest here. When I started on it my friends were legitimately friends or at least strong acquaintances. These were people I worked with or went to Notre Dame with. Then it started growing as more people from my past began to find me. It is pretty cool to catch up with an old friend from college and even more so when it is someone from back in the grade school or high school days. But then it gets a little weirder.
At some point you start getting requests from people you haven’t thought about for twenty years. I always assume that the reverse is true; I have a hard time believing that anyone would ever find me so memorable that after twenty years they’d go “I wonder what Chris is doing?” This is followed by the friend requests from people you don’t even remember. They theoretically know you and they are convinced that they were your classmate but you simply don’t recall them at all. For me this is pretty frightening because it means that there is this huge blank spot in my photographic memory.
So I would like to propose the following rule. All friend requests are subject to a three fact rule. To become friends if you do not see or speak to this person on a regular basis you must be able to recite three facts about them. Doesn’t matter what they are, just state three facts about their history. This way we will keep Facebook as a collection of people who know each other as opposed to random lists of people you at one time came across.
My other issue is that there really is this strange reaction I get when befriending people from high school on Facebook. Now don’t get me wrong, I really find it cool and a few read the blog which is amazing, but it really does transport you back to that timeframe. Which means that I am constantly trying to deal with all of those emotions of high school most of which I never want to relive. I’ve left that part of me in the distant past and I don’t have a great desire to go back.
But that is exactly what you do. You constantly try to portray yourself in the best light possible (or at least I do). I want to show that I am successful and have accomplished all of my goals and am happy whether any of those things are true or not. Suddenly I find myself in a popularity contest with people I haven’t seen for twenty years. Which is made even worse when I realize that mathematically speaking I am closer to 50 than I am to 15.
Wow, that last sentence is true. I’m just going to curl up in the corner and sob quietly for a moment. Excuse me.
In the end I have prided myself on living my life under no one’s rules but my own. That means that on the bell curve of experiences I typically find myself at either end but never in the middle. Which makes it a little strange when you meet up with people you sat next to years ago and you realize that your lives are completely different. If I am in the right mood my reaction is that I don’t really care. If I’m happy and they’re happy then who is to say who took the right path? But sometimes I do wonder just how I got here and where this road is going to take me.
(And before you ask, no I am not setting up a twitter feed. If you’ve read this site for any length of time the concept of me writing anything meaningful in 150 characters is pretty ludicrous.)
But there is something about Facebook that has really been bugging me and I just have to get it off my chest here. When I started on it my friends were legitimately friends or at least strong acquaintances. These were people I worked with or went to Notre Dame with. Then it started growing as more people from my past began to find me. It is pretty cool to catch up with an old friend from college and even more so when it is someone from back in the grade school or high school days. But then it gets a little weirder.
At some point you start getting requests from people you haven’t thought about for twenty years. I always assume that the reverse is true; I have a hard time believing that anyone would ever find me so memorable that after twenty years they’d go “I wonder what Chris is doing?” This is followed by the friend requests from people you don’t even remember. They theoretically know you and they are convinced that they were your classmate but you simply don’t recall them at all. For me this is pretty frightening because it means that there is this huge blank spot in my photographic memory.
So I would like to propose the following rule. All friend requests are subject to a three fact rule. To become friends if you do not see or speak to this person on a regular basis you must be able to recite three facts about them. Doesn’t matter what they are, just state three facts about their history. This way we will keep Facebook as a collection of people who know each other as opposed to random lists of people you at one time came across.
My other issue is that there really is this strange reaction I get when befriending people from high school on Facebook. Now don’t get me wrong, I really find it cool and a few read the blog which is amazing, but it really does transport you back to that timeframe. Which means that I am constantly trying to deal with all of those emotions of high school most of which I never want to relive. I’ve left that part of me in the distant past and I don’t have a great desire to go back.
But that is exactly what you do. You constantly try to portray yourself in the best light possible (or at least I do). I want to show that I am successful and have accomplished all of my goals and am happy whether any of those things are true or not. Suddenly I find myself in a popularity contest with people I haven’t seen for twenty years. Which is made even worse when I realize that mathematically speaking I am closer to 50 than I am to 15.
Wow, that last sentence is true. I’m just going to curl up in the corner and sob quietly for a moment. Excuse me.
In the end I have prided myself on living my life under no one’s rules but my own. That means that on the bell curve of experiences I typically find myself at either end but never in the middle. Which makes it a little strange when you meet up with people you sat next to years ago and you realize that your lives are completely different. If I am in the right mood my reaction is that I don’t really care. If I’m happy and they’re happy then who is to say who took the right path? But sometimes I do wonder just how I got here and where this road is going to take me.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Will you be my friend?
Now I’ve been pretty upfront in stating that I find Facebook to be a strange and interesting place. The entire purpose of the site is up for debate. Yes it is a useful way to stay in touch with people though I don’t understand how it is any different than e-mail in that regard. You get to show the world who you are by the things you like; defining yourself by other people’s creative endeavors. That’s not exactly the best thing in the world. Want to tell the world about yourself? Start a blog. Everything you need to understand me is on this site somewhere. And as soon as someone explains to me what the hell “poke” means I’ll be a much happier person.
But for the most part I enjoy my time on the site. It’s just that this week I had a rather strange friend request. It wasn’t from an old high school classmate (though I just had one of those) or from some vague work colleague of mine (which I have a number of). No, I received notification of the following:
“Kansas City wants to be my friend.”
As in the city itself has asked to be my friend. This is rather disturbing. I have had a hard enough time in my life making friends with real people. I typically keep few friends but those that I do have I cherish to a great degree. But I tend not to become friends with inanimate objects. Not even my laptop, which has seen more of me than anyone, is considered a friend. A trusted colleague to be sure but not a friend. Now the city itself is asking me for friendship.
It’s an interesting change of events because for much of the past five years this city has been anything but my friend. It doesn’t qualify as an enemy or a nemesis more like that dude you know who is a friend of a friend that continually gets under your nerves. He constantly says the wrong things, dresses in a manner that bugs you and never seems to buy you a round. I wasn’t welcome to this town with open arms but at least it wasn’t disdain either. We’ve mellowed with each other as the years have gone by and for some reason we are on good terms right now. So maybe I should view this as a bit of a reconciliatory gesture by the city. After all this time of fighting me it has decided to try to be friends with me.
Still, I’m trying to figure out what type of friendship would this be. Would the city help me move? Would it bail me out if I had a really bad night at the bars? Could the city be my wingman on a Saturday night going “Of every person in the city, this guy is the best of the bunch. Trust me, I know”. Will it have my back if I get in a fight in the suburbs? These are the sorts of things I need to know before I confirm my friendship.
Also, for those wondering Kansas City is interested in friendship and networking. I guess that is a good thing. I’m not sure what it would mean if the city was interested in dating. But given the whole KCK-KCMO situation I’m pretty sure it’s relationship status is “It’s complicated.”
Upbeat music for the day: A Gomez song about traveling and finding yourself. “It’s the things that are given not won are the things that you want.”
But for the most part I enjoy my time on the site. It’s just that this week I had a rather strange friend request. It wasn’t from an old high school classmate (though I just had one of those) or from some vague work colleague of mine (which I have a number of). No, I received notification of the following:
“Kansas City wants to be my friend.”
As in the city itself has asked to be my friend. This is rather disturbing. I have had a hard enough time in my life making friends with real people. I typically keep few friends but those that I do have I cherish to a great degree. But I tend not to become friends with inanimate objects. Not even my laptop, which has seen more of me than anyone, is considered a friend. A trusted colleague to be sure but not a friend. Now the city itself is asking me for friendship.
It’s an interesting change of events because for much of the past five years this city has been anything but my friend. It doesn’t qualify as an enemy or a nemesis more like that dude you know who is a friend of a friend that continually gets under your nerves. He constantly says the wrong things, dresses in a manner that bugs you and never seems to buy you a round. I wasn’t welcome to this town with open arms but at least it wasn’t disdain either. We’ve mellowed with each other as the years have gone by and for some reason we are on good terms right now. So maybe I should view this as a bit of a reconciliatory gesture by the city. After all this time of fighting me it has decided to try to be friends with me.
Still, I’m trying to figure out what type of friendship would this be. Would the city help me move? Would it bail me out if I had a really bad night at the bars? Could the city be my wingman on a Saturday night going “Of every person in the city, this guy is the best of the bunch. Trust me, I know”. Will it have my back if I get in a fight in the suburbs? These are the sorts of things I need to know before I confirm my friendship.
Also, for those wondering Kansas City is interested in friendship and networking. I guess that is a good thing. I’m not sure what it would mean if the city was interested in dating. But given the whole KCK-KCMO situation I’m pretty sure it’s relationship status is “It’s complicated.”
Upbeat music for the day: A Gomez song about traveling and finding yourself. “It’s the things that are given not won are the things that you want.”
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