It serves me right to suffer some, I suppose. That doesn’t mean I have to Like • Comment • Share that fact with everyone. Still, I do. But as the hours turn into days, and the days will soon be a week, I’ve stopped feeling hopeful when a text message chirps, or my customized ring buzzes with a call. The phone is easier to ignore, because it’s never the ring I’ve assigned to her. I’ve stopped grabbing the iPhone to immediately scroll through my new messages because deep down I know none of them will be from her. Sometimes I won’t even check for 10 minutes after getting one. I can’t even follow what’s happening with her life on Facebook because she’s either blocked me, or deactivated the account. The optimist in me truly hopes it’s the latter.
A total Facebook block of a single individual is probably the most effective way to tell someone online that, “You are no longer welcome in my inner circle, and probably not in my life at all.” I find the fact that this inner circle doesn’t include me but does include more than 100,000 of her Friends of Friends particularly depressing.
I used to know her password. The level of trust that represents is superhuman. The spare key to your apartment and all of your pin numbers put together would still not come even close. A password is a key to the intimacies of hundreds of Facebook friends, but more importantly it allows access to the birthing canal of your online identity. In a Google world where everything is stored forever, your reputation online is more important than it is in your circle of real life friends. Like herpes, anything that happens online never goes away once the search engines find it, and unlike Vegas it doesn’t stay anywhere but often propagates at the exponential speed of viral communication.
I’m getting off message. The point is it was one hell of a fall from shared passwords to virtual blockade. And for someone like me who lives online, it’s not hyperbole to liken it to a little death.
“Oh god, K, you’re so dramatic. I had to cut you off. You kept posting weird shit on my wall. My family reads that you know?”
“I was going to tell you that it’s probably not a good idea to friend your kids. You’re 16-year old doesn’t need to know what you look like dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better I deactivated my account completely.”
“It actually does. Singling out one person out of 500,000,000 users is quite a statement don’t you think? At least now I blend in with the rest of the planet.”
“I wanted my privacy back. And I felt like I had to respond to everyone that contacted me. I don’t need that. I actually feel free.”
“Hippie.”