coolmite

Two Saturdays ago, my wife said that our friend from Ireland, Bridie Coleman, had cajoled her into making her own Facebook page. She thought I should start one too.

I had my doubts, because, as I’ve said before, social networking sites, like myspace.com give the perception that if you’re over age 35–and you aren’t an entertainer, marketer, or in a band–you look kind of creepy being involved with said sites.

After a conversation with my cousin Sean, who is 37, single and a successful lawyer (ladies?), I got a little turned around. He uses myspace as a clearinghouse for all of his personal contacts. He comes from an enormous family and he’s able to keep in touch with people in a very easy way, since he’s busy and traveling for work.

Plus all of the soft-core porn (you people know what I’m talking about) gives myspace that extra ick factor. I’ve got nothing against porn–I just don’t want to see it on my Facebook page or hidden in my computer.

So, I tried the Facebook thing. See if you can find me! I have a page that accurately describes me, connects me to family, friends and new friends from the Internet (IRC, represent!). I’m especially proud of my connection to Kevin Allison, of the comedy troupe “The State,” who connected to me via his connection to my friend, Ben Masten. I’m also connected to comic Jim Gaffigan.

What I really like about Facebook is that it’s clean. I can have photo albums of my family and me that look good. It lists me as married to my wife–what a novel idea!

The only downside I see so far is all of the applications you can sign up for, like Muppet Gifts, Compare People, Flixter, etc. You have to be careful where they’ll broadcast information. I compared people in my group of friends based on random questions, like “Who’s sexier?” and “Who would win in a fight?”. Unfortunately, it took all of my votes and distributed them to the winners of each competition. My fraternity brother’s sister won the “Who’s sexier?” vote against a male friend of mine. My wife won the “Who would win in a fight?” vote. I wish I had more control over that.

Anyhoo, I’m learning. I want to be careful, because my OCD will keep me rapt to the site for hours at a time if I let it. Thank God I can’t see it at work, or I’d have real problems.