Tuesday, April 6, 2010

facebook friends

It's become a modern journalist's trope: when she or he becomes stuck, up pops a little article about "facebook friends" - how the very notion of a "friend" does or doesn't map onto "real" friendship; as though "a friend of mine" can't, even in a non-virtual sense, already mean anything between someone with whom I exchanged confidences about favorite ponies when I was eleven; and someone I went to bed with a few times; and my very, very best friend to whom I'll tell everything and whom I could call up at 3 in the morning and she really wouldn't mind. Probably.

But this, found on New Brunswick station? Scrawled (but not inartistically - note the neat spacing and placing of the letters) on a USPS To...From... sticky label? With a little drawing, somewhere between a slightly paranoid spook and a condom ad? Does it suggest that we don't actually know our FB friends, and that they could be stalking us without our knowing, and pop up anywhere? 0r, at the very least, that we don't have a clue whom among these friends would be leaving tasteful graffiti at the railroad station? Why no capital "I"? Is that meant to be extra-super-casual, or self-indulgently, e e cummings like self-effacing? Is it indeed friendly, or menacing?

No comments:

Post a Comment