let's call it a bra-mance

so i've been pondering lately our new (sorta) communication levels. the kind of facebook/bogger/twitter/smartphone/email/phone/snail mail (it still exists!) communication that keeps us in the know about every little thing about each other that we didn't even want to know. and people talk a lot about the drawbacks. and they are there to be sure. i mean there have been at least 6 stories that i have heard of this year about teenagers committing suicide because of what people have written about them on the internet, or what people have lied to them about on the internet, or people claiming to be someone and then ended up being someone else (like a parent!) on the internet. remember that med student who killed a girl he solicited on craigslist? i mean this social networking thing/speedy connection to everyone and everything seems to be a real downer and then i think, well, without it i wouldn't have half of the friends in chicago that i do. and i am not talking about fakey, i met you once facebook friends. i don't do that.

my constant internet use--which bounces between facebook, reading tabloids, the news and gawker, perusing misc. sites and now blogging--has kept me not just on the cutting edge of ammo for my brangelina hate (seriously totally team aniston over here), but also actual news (which as anyone who knows my nosey parker self is important to me...i did write/edit for a newspaper, remember them!), literature, music, films and other people. let me draw a six degree situation for you.

when i moved to chicago i knew personally two people, stephanie and amanda. i have a network of meet and greet based friends that i know through steph. these are people that i have known before or immediately after moving to this amazing city. hi guys! anyway then there are the people i know through amanda (who, for those of you who don't know, was one of my college roommates at nyu). i reconnected with my redheaded friend when i moved here, the city of her birth mind you, and together we attended this jezebel (website) meet up where i met robyn. from there robyn invited the two of us to this fledgling thing she and her friend allen were putting on. amanda and i accepted the invite and started attending and then performing at the sunday night sex show (performing entails reading short stories people, minds out of the gutter please).

shameless plug side note: the sunday night sex show is held the last sunday of every month at 7:30 at the burlington in logan square. more info on its facebook page...see...

through the show i have met a host of friends, fellow readers, bloggers and generally fab and strange people. and save for the monthly exposure to them at the snss i would probably never see them during my day to day life. but then comes social networking and texting and all of a sudden my weekly dance card fills up faster than my wine glass on a monday night.

because of facebook i can talk to anyone of these people anytime i want. and it doesn't have to really mean anything either. and i like that. and i also like that i get to be a passive observer of their lives. for example, i know that blow joy (a fellow blogger, snss reader and fb friend!) hates the company she works for and just got this awesome new tattoo on her "bat wing." Two things that most likely would not have come up in conversation each month when i see her. perhaps the tattoo would have as the spring and summer weather had her wearing less sweaters and more t-shirts, but you get my point.

in addition, facebook has allowed for me to remember to invite (and also harass) friends to join me for a cocktail/birthday/wedding reception(j/k i'm still single, hint, hint)/sex reading. i am not a wholly social animal. i like my personal time and my empty apartment filled with knick-knacks, magazines, books and dust, but facebook (and by this i really mean my friends) get me out of my cocoon. it tells me what i should be doing and when i have to get there and who else i can expect to come with me. it is like having a bossy friend/boyfriend/sister who is also your schedulator. and let me tell you there is nothing i hate more than having to plan anything. no joke. when my friends asked me what i wanted to do for my 30th birthdays (yes days there were many) the first thing i said was not have to worry about what i was going to do for my 30th birthdays. your present to me would be to do the thinking, the planning and inviting and i could just show up. thank you jess and steph for making my wish come true.

and just as the internet has given me an additional layer of friends that hover between acquaintance and well-worn, it also gives me the opportunity to shift one or a few of these friends into a different category, and at a faster pace than i might have done myself by phone call or email or text. for example, ms. irby, as of late, has become one of my fast friends. she and amanda and i have been having a very public love affair based on mutal admiration, a bra-mance if you will, happening on facebook and also a continuous message thread to complement it (i hope you ladies are cool with me exposing this). on the public boards we comment on songs, movies, blogs, updates and events we want to do together. in our private thread we discuss things, that are, well, private so sorry no deets here. but again you get my drift. and through these communications we have built actual face time into our respective schedules, lest you think that we are just computer nerds that only know each other's ip addresses and not real ones. i also get to read about their lives on their blogs at bitchesgottaeat.com and rocknrollunicorns.blogspot.com. (p.s. i am having issues with building links into my posts if anyone wants to help!). too meta you say? perhaps, but i have loved amanda for years before, but now we both got to know and love samantha too and i feel as if i've known her just as long as amanda because of these here internets.

there is also the oft noted, yet rarely admitted to outside of close circles, stalker side of facebook. perhaps this is because the first rule of facebook stalking is you don't talk about facebook stalking. or perhaps people are embarrassed to say they spend hours combing through their friends friends to find one they like. i for one am admitting here on this blog and in front of its 9(!) followers that i have done this. and the friend (ehem, thanks sugar lips) promptly tried to hook it up. although it was a wash for several reasons, just the possibility was an adrenaline rush. for someone who doesn't really like putting herself out there, i could tell my friend he was cute and then she could ostensibly tell him to check out my profile and if he liked what he saw we could meet up (actually, this scenario did happen a few weeks later with a different guy she picked...). it is like eharmony.com or chemistry.com without having to answer 5,003 questions about what makes your heart race at 200 bpm vs. 350 bpm and spend like $1000 a year to have some asshole not write you back. i could have gotten that shit for free and with the benefit of my friend being like 'nah, he is not good enough' or 'no sense of humor' or 'he could work' or 'dude called me and told me he didn't have the $5 to get in (true story) so i thought i'd pass for you.' now that is a service i would pay for. i'm serious facebook get on it.

i know there are facebook haters out there and i am certainly not suggesting that you join something that makes you uncomfortable or to over share with constant fb updates or blogger blog posts (guilty as charged), but i am suggesting that you can get yourself out there in the cyber world and in doing so it might change how often you put yourself out there in the real world. i for one have benefited from the facebook. i've been friended, unfriended, flirted, dated, blogged about and hit on via this site. and all of that virtual action has led to the most actual social action i've seen in years.