I Surrender

It’s late and I’m up anyway, as usual. Probably had classes all day and will have classes the next day. My roommate is sitting at his computer, painted in the glow of his computer monitor. I note that his legs are crossed. I’m lying in bed just a few feet from his corner desk. Lucky for me, I’m able to sleep despite the light.

We’ve only been back to school a month or so since the summer break, during which time that same roommate broke up with his then girlfriend of some three or so years. He spent much of the rest of the summer agonizing over another girl, playing courtship deathmatch with some emo-riffic douche. As I turn over onto my side and adjust the covers to find a comfortable position, he’s flirting with said girl on MySpace.

Remember that site?

I like to imagine the banter consisted mostly of trading “ur cute” profile comments. I say this as if I’ve never been guilty of acting like a damn fool over a girl. The passage of time makes it easy to gloss over my own fatuous behavior. But even then I already felt I was superior. Look at him, the poor sap! Hah! Lame. You’ll never catch me being that dopey.

Whatever happened to talking on the phone? That MySpace crap is such a navel-gazing waste of time!

Right?

My haughty attitude would continue on through the Xanga phases and then the Facebook craze (which never really ended, in retrospect). No, no, no! Not for me. I haven’t got time for such diversions! My time was better spent playing games and goofing off elsewhere on the internet. Go figure.

At some point it felt like there was no going back. Like that guy who still hasn’t seen the original Star Wars. What the hell man, you’re not on Facebook? I began to wear it like a badge of honor, casually dropping my lack of membership like it was dinner with the Pope. Oh he’s really not that much different than you or me, despite, yanno, being the conduit of the all-mighty god of course. Real down-to-earth chap once he takes the hat off.

I told myself I wasn’t bragging and that I wasn’t wrong. My time, I rationalized, was already divided up between lots of things I love and I was already always chronically behind on them. If I joined, it would just be one more thing sucking up my preciously limited free time.

Then Google+ happened. And I joined. Like, early on. I was already on Twitter, too. And doing this here blog. I felt like a real tech savvy modern champ, I did. And not just because I was slingin’ code for a living, too.

I found myself in the awkward position of having to defend joining G+ when I had been such a staunch anti-Facebook guy for so long. Not that anyone really asked, though. Google’s social experiment had a brief spasm of life but has mostly petered out. I still post on there for… some reason. I like sharing the goofiness, occasionally. Not that I have any followers that have stuck around to notice.

I realized I was this hypocrite doing everything I could to join the party without actually going to it. And it wasn’t working, either, because everyone is on Facebook.

Which brings me to today. Specifically, very early today. After midnight some time, so it was technically today. I had already been hand-wringing the previous week, sensing in my drunken stupor that my resolve was quickly waning. And, really, what was my resolve, exactly? To alienate myself? To avoid the “chore” of keeping in touch with the many people I don’t ever get to see much, if at all, since leaving college? Did I fancy myself a martyr of some sort?

No, I was just stubborn.

But at least I can admit it, I guess.

So, hello, everyone. Wanna be my Facebook friend?