Modern Problems (or 他是谁?)
Here’s a 2008 dilemma for you: What do you do if you run into someone you have “de-friended” on Facebook?
Such was my experience last Saturday night when I joined R. for a belated celebration of her birthday at a (well-known, but actually surprisingly bad) Cantonese place near the Lama Temple. Among the eight at the table was a Chinese friend of hers who’d friended me (=”become my FB friend”) after we were on the same team at a pub quiz last fall. Accepting the “friend” invitation seemed harmless enough at the time—indeed, to refuse would have seemed churlish—but after awhile I began to be irritated at receiving too frequent, chirpy “status updates” about this guy I’d only met once, briefly, and hadn’t particularly cottoned to. There’s definitely something odd in FB’s tendency to preserve even the most casual acquaintances in digital amber—the passing faces in the crowd of life given exactly the same weight as those with whom you’ve shared meaningful experiences.
So, one day I quietly deleted him and several other such ephemera from my friends list, in much the same spirit one would toss an old playbill or concert program, or, as Graham Greene once put it, a souvenir “bought for a forgotten reason on a forgotten holiday.” But now, some 7 months on, here he is again, disinterred from my mental landfill. And, of course, it’s all a bit awkward. Does he know I de-friended him? (When an actual friend of mine temporarily suspended her FB account, it was months and months before I noticed.) If so, does he care? Should I care that he cares? But most of all I sat there thinking how fundamentally absurd it was that I should even be considering whether or not I offended this guy I don’t even know.
As it happens, this was the very same day I opened one of my webmail address books and chanced across a name that stopped me in my tracks: Vanessa Johnson. I thought about it long and hard, but still could not, for the life of me, imagine who Vanessa Johnson might be. Where had I known her? When? The only candidate I could come up with was a certain Vanessa I dimly remembered from my drudgery at B&N several years ago, but, even if that’s the right Vanessa, I couldn’t begin to fathom why I’d have her e-mail. So out she went. But having started, I didn’t stop there: there were no more absolute mystery persons, but a lot of what I ruthlessly decided was clutter: travelers I’d met in South America; web-acquaintances from a site I used to frequent; folks I’d known in Russia who’ve drifted out of touch…or were never really in touch in the first place. Saying that they’re “dead to me” sounds brutal, but reflects a truth: I actually wish them well, wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, but I know that I’ll never have any occasion to contact them. At least 30 names were consigned thereby to personal oblivion…and 30 more could have easily gone but for a certain saudade. (Cynical as I am becoming, I’m not completely immune to the siren call of the past.)
