Not That I’m Counting…

Last night when I signed off Facebook there were 303 pictures of me. Last week there were 331. This morning there are 255. I am dwindling! Are people gathering up their pictures of me and leaving Facebook behind?

They way I look at it is this: If you take my picture, that’s fine, I don’t care. And if you want to put it up on Facebook and tag me, that’s fine too. But once it goes into that “Pictures of me” folder, I WANT IT! I have gotten very used to those 331, or 303, or 255 photos of myself. Okay, most of them. Well, some of them. A lot of them are candid group shots where all you can see is my foot or my left arm. Clearly I was tagged by some mad tagger who feels the need to identify every bit of every photo on Facebook. I really don’t need those pictures of me, but some are really great photos, and I want them back! You teased me with these photos, making me think that I could forever see myself in your 17 of the 331, 303 or 255 photos of me, and now you have removed them from my realm forever. That’s just plain mean.

What can I do? I have tried saving them to my computer, but they are quite small and not worth the trouble. (“Really, that little dot there is ME, I swear it!") Maybe I can make a new album within Facebook as I have seen others do. (Which is another thing that perplexes me – someone will tag or comment on a photo I took and posted, so I get an email announcing it, but it says my photo is in a album called “Sally’s Road Trip!” and in the meantime I am not “friends” with anyone named Sally, and the rest of her album is populated with people I don’t know in places I have never been – but there’s the photo I took, nestled amongst them like it belongs there, familiar yet somewhat out of place, reminiscent of ET in the closet with the stuffed toys…) But even if I make a new album of other people’s photos, who’s to say Facebook won’t one day just go away? We have no control over this website whatsoever! (Rather, it controls us.)

I guess I need to not grow attached to these photos of me and my friends, because they can be snatched from me at a moment’s notice either by the fickle will of a “friend”(or of a “friend’s friend,” or a six-degrees of Facebook separation “friend”), or by litigation against the owner of Facebook which will result in the whole site’s crashing down in a pile of li'l green patches, unwanted status updates, and 10 trillion photos of 150 million “Me’s.”

Leslie is NOT happy that Facebook has this hold on her!




Copyright (c) 2009 Leslie R Becker