Facebook Stalking
I’m in my office at home. I log onto Facebook. I have forty-six friends. They are all actually my friends or at least people I know. Holly has 739 friends. I can’t imagine they are all actually her friends or at least people she knows.
I have four profile photos: one of myself in a suit that was taken at work for my employee file, one of myself and my wife that was taken at the company holiday party last year, one of myself and my two kids that was taken by my wife in our backyard, and one of our entire family that Alyna hired a photographer to take about a year ago to be sent out as our family Christmas card. Beyond this I have a handful of other photos that I posted to my wall at various times for various meaningless reasons.
Holly has 324 profile photos and 2,543 other photos. I sift through the first twenty or thirty until I realize they’re all essentially of three varieties: Holly taking a picture of herself from a high angle, Holly taking a picture of herself in a mirror, or Holly taking a picture of herself with a female friend in the picture.
My relationship status is “married.” Holly’s is “married” also. I click on her spouse and find it’s another twenty-one-year-old girl, Megan Larrion. Holly is not actually married.
I scroll through the last twenty or so status updates she’s posted. They’re all from the last four hours. They range from “<3 New Girl <3 Zooey” to “Can someone please teach me to fly a plane?” They all have no less than fifty likes and no less than twenty-five to thirty comments, mostly from guys her age who don’t even try to hide the fact that they want to fuck her, if they haven’t already.
The post that really drives the nail in the coffin of my realization that I have nothing in common with anyone from this generation reads, “Can’t find my socks!!!” The post has seventy-eight likes and fifty-four comments. Many of the comments are jokes—things like “Try looking on your feet. LOL!!!” or pieces of advice like “Just don’t wear any!!!” But one comment by a guy with gouged ears and a lip ring named Tanner Dempsey, which reads “Holy crap! I lost my socks too!!!” actually gets Holly to respond.
Her response reads, “Oh noes! Where did you find them?”
Tanner’s reply reads, “I just bought some new ones.”
Holly’s reply reads, “I don’t have time to go buy new ones. Where should I look?”
Tanner’s reply reads, “I guess in the dryer or something.”
Holly’s reply reads, “I did. There not there.”
Tanner’s reply reads, “You want to borrow a pair?”
Holly’s reply reads, “They won’t fit. LOL!!!”
Finally a guy named Tom Brown adds a comment that reads, “How can you only have one pair of fucking socks? LOL.”
And that’s the end of the thread. The degree of meaningless stupidity in all of her posts is beyond astonishing to me. I realize these are the things she’s doing at work when she’s on Facebook. I had imagined that she was sending out invitations to parties or posting links to articles about contemporary politics or world events.
The degree of physical attraction I have to her, and the fantasy relationship I’ve built with her over the few moments we’ve shared at work, make it far easier than I would have thought to dismiss all of this, to maintain my mental image of her as a smart and mature-for-her-age young college girl. I reason that I just must be out of the loop when it comes to kids her age and how they interact with one another. By placing too much importance on the hug we shared in the parking lot, I’m able to ignore the obvious fact that she’s very probably the vapid type of young girl who needs attention from men so desperately that she’s willing to spend hours on end fishing for men to give her that attention by constantly communicating her every thought and action on Facebook, including her missing socks. Just as I’m deciding that all of this is cute and innocent after all, my wife walks into our home office with her iPad in one hand and Jane in her other arm and says, “Who is Holly McDonnel?”
I log out of Facebook and say, “The new intern at work, why?”
“Why’d you friend her?”
“She sent me a request.”
“Uh-huh. Is this the intern you told me was a guy?”
“I never said she was a guy.”
“Yeah, I was under the impression the new intern was a guy, so you must have.”
“What, are you pissed or something?”
“No. Not pissed.”
I stand up and take Jane from her, in what I hope is a display of my loyalty to our family, even though I would love nothing more than to fuck the girl of whom my wife is now justifiably jealous. As Alyna walks away back into the living room she says, “She doesn’t seem like the smartest tool in the shed.”
I nod my head in agreement, then sit back down at the computer with Jane in my lap and log back on to Facebook. I look at Alyna’s profile. She posts maybe one status update every three or four days, the last of which reads, “Watching some Yo Gabba Gabba with the kids.” It has no comments and no likes.