Workshopping memoir titles
#Blessed: Thank God we Didn’t Have Facebook
Considering life expectancy for dudes hovers around 75-years old, I don’t think it’s too soon to workshop titles for a memoir. One of the potential titles is #Blessed: Thank God we Didn’t Have Facebook.
At my future-former nine-to-five, there’s a lot of conversation around convincing young adults to work at summer camps. I found myself flashing back to my own experiences at that age, and how different looking for jobs has become. Nowadays, your resume starts when you sign up for your first social account.
I remember being a senior at UGA when my buddy’s little sister found me in the Student Learning Center. I was on my second to last all-nighter before graduation, and she was bringing me coffee. This was spring 2005. When Michelle found me, she asked if I had been on or heard of The Facebook (don’t fact check me here, I don’t remember exactly when “The” was dropped from its name).
The concept wasn’t hard to understand, but I had not heard of The Facebook yet. Thank God for that.
I’d like to think we would’ve exercised better judgment, but had there been Facebook in college, the law of large numbers suggests one of our bonehead experiences would’ve gone viral (and not in a “Charlie bit my finger” sort of way).
While me and my circle of friends were studying into the wee hours of the night, there were stories around campus retelling shenanigans of the highest order. Stolen deer meat, good-natured B&Es, and casual pranks that border legality were weekly occurrences around Athens. It’s a shame the occasional prank turned into a broken window, but we’re just all happy no one ever got hurt.
The point to all of this is that in the absence of social media, once you made it to sunrise without seeing flashing blues, everything was just a story.
Then, teenagers got cell phones with built-in cameras and a link to the internet. We gave them instant access to upload texts and images directly to the public without running it by the offices of mom and dad. Say what you want about parental controls, but kids working around parental boundaries is a tradition dating back millennia.
My daughter will be no exception. I don’t know when we’ll get her a cell phone, but when that day comes, I fully intend on instilling the fear of God in her when it comes to social media.
Someone’s reading this (hopefully) and laughing at me. Let me clarify, I fully surrender to the fact that I’m no longer in charge of this ship. I just hope I can convince my daughter that the monsters in certain parts of the sea aren’t worth exploring.
