I've noticed in the last few days that more and more of my 40-(or plus-)something peers, like my college roommate, are racing to join Facebook, which either means that a) the social networking site has reached a tipping point or b) like I wrote the other day, Facebook is soooo 2007.
If you 're not on the social-networking site, Slate's Farhad Manjoo wants to know why "You Have No Friends":
Friends—can I call you friends?—it's time to drop the attitude: There is no longer any good reason to avoid Facebook. The site has crossed a threshold—it is now so widely trafficked that it's fast becoming a routine aide to social interaction, like e-mail and antiperspirant. It's only the most recent of many new technologies that have crossed over this stage. For a long while—from about the late '80s to the late-middle '90s, Wall Street to Jerry Maguire—carrying a mobile phone seemed like a haughty affectation. But as more people got phones, they became more useful for everyone—and then one day enough people had cell phones that everyone began to assume that you did, too. Your friends stopped prearranging where they would meet up on Saturday night because it was assumed that everyone would call from wherever they were to find out what was going on. From that moment on, it became an affectation not to carry a mobile phone; they'd grown so deeply entwined with modern life that the only reason to be without one was to make a statement by abstaining. Facebook is now at that same point—whether or not you intend it, you're saying something by staying away. The article does a good job running through the reasons people still don't join Facebook and then knocking then down. As some of you know, I'm on Facebook and I've been using it to connect with both old and now new friends who are interesting in my upcoming "Tear Down This Myth" -- as well as locating or be located by friends from as far back as high school and college. That said, I have a hunch that a majority of Attytood readers aren't on Facebook -- but then Attytood commenters are usually people who cut against the grain.
