Tynan on Tech

by Dan Tynan

When word got out that my wife and I were splitting up, I received several emails from long-time friends who knew us back when we were both skinny–err, dating.

“I am a little heartbroken about your current relationship status,” wrote one.

“What’s with the single status? Are you guys splitsky? That’s so wrong and sad,” wrote another.

The thing is, we never actually told anyone we were divorcing. Because, in fact, we weren’t.

All we’d done was change our Facebook relationship status from “Married” to “It’s complicated” and then to “Single.” It was an experiment in social networking; we wanted to see what would happen. Would anyone notice? Would they care? Would some long-lost flame suddenly re-emerge to declare he was still carrying a torch, lo these many decades? (That was my wife’s part of the experiment, in case you’re wondering.)

But after the first few emails came in, we couldn’t resist having a little fun. So I used my Facebook status updates to elaborate about my upcoming (fictional) move to Seattle, while my wife went on about all the fascinating men she was meeting on eHarmony. (Which isn’t fictional, but that’s a story for anther time.)

More emails arrived.

“How are the kids handling it?” one concerned friend wrote.

“Oh, as best as can be expected,” I replied.

Are we evil? Probably.

Aside from being a really kick-ass April Fools Day joke, though, our experiment taught me a few things about how social media is changing, and how it’s changing us.

Unlike many of our old friends (at least, those who are still speaking to us), we no longer live in a high-tech Mecca. When we tell our local friends about Facebook, we have to explain what it is and why anyone would use it. We say that Facebook and other social networks offer the illusion of intimacy – the feeling that you’re in someone’s life, even if you’re not.

But now I’m not so sure that’s true. Because being “intimate” with someone – in a non-clothing-optional way – usually means being caught up on the plot, tuned into the mini-dramas that play out in other people’s lives. Facebook has that kind of intimacy in spades.

My Facebook network is a strange melange of friends and relatives I’ve known all my life, people I worked with long ago but don’t see much any more, and near total strangers I couldn’t pick out of a police lineup. Yet simply by reading their status updates, I know more about some of them than I’d ever have gleaned through normal day-to-day interaction.

I learned, for example, that a PR professional I met once 15 years ago not only hails from my hometown but is also shagging the editor of a magazine I write for. Meanwhile, said editor obsessively updates his own Facebook status, so I know where he is on an almost hourly basis.

A fellow freelancer recently complained to me that this editor never returns his emails. “Oh,” I said, “That’s because he’s currently in Germany, and then in New York for a conference. He’ll be back next Tuesday. You should drop him a note on Facebook; he always replies to those.”

I’ve learned one person I was convinced is gay is in fact married with two kids and worries a lot about his lawn. I know which of my Facebook friends is dangerously obsessed with baseball and which ones can’t stop posting strange videos to YouTube when they really should be working. I know what my Facebook friends had for breakfast, who’s hungover, who’s in the middle of buying a house, and how grandma’s hip surgery turned out. And that’s just today’s updates.

I feel strangely closer to these people, even though I’m viewing them through the lens of a telegraphic note broadcast to an unknown number of strangers.

It’s cool. It’s also weird. But mainly it’s cool.

Overall, I’d call our experiment a moderate success. On the positive side, we didn’t receive any “Woo-hoo – glad you finally dumped that loser!” responses. (At least, I didn’t. I can’t speak for my wife.) While we didn’t get as many condolences or mash notes as we would have liked, it’s nice to know somebody still cares.

As for us, we’re doing just fine, thanks. Most of the time things are pretty great, and the rest of the time … well, there’s a reason we don’t keep firearms in the house. That’s just the way it is when you’ve been married for 347 years.

But if we do get divorced, you’ll be the first to know. After I’ve told everyone on Facebook, of course.

Technorati Tags: facebook,social networks,april fools,spoofs,writers,editors

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Tags: divorce, Facebook, marriage, social networks

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