I love Facebook. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I do, and why should I be? Is it still considered "cool" or "hip" to shun FB? I don't think so. Face it, if you don't have a Facebook profile in 2011, you're nobody, better off dead, a blight on the face of God's green Earth.
OK. Maybe not. Perhaps I'm being a tad hyperbolic. I have a tendency to skew that way sometimes. But, c'mon, Facebook is the norm these days. What other service makes it possible to "friend" classmates who barely knew you existed in high school and find out what club openings they'll be attending throughout any given week? Where else can you build and maintain a small farm and not end up in financial ruin? How would I know what culinary delights my aunt in Baltimore was pretending to cook up in Cafe World without Facebook? In a world without Facebook I'd never know where my high school art teacher went on vacation, what classic movie monsters my co-workers are most like, or where the next meeting of the North Carolina Society of Twi-moms was going to be held. I depend on Facebook for all kinds of things--birthday reminders, chatting with old friends, cyber-stalking--and without it, well, I don't know what I'd do.
Of course, without Facebook we never would've become acquainted with the Devil of Detroit Street. You remember her, right? She was the young woman in Trenton, MI who carried on a one woman campaign to ruin the life of a seven-year-old girl with a terminal illness, creating a Facebook page with pictures of the girl's head accompanied by a set of crossbones, as well as, images of the girl's mother, who had died of the same disease some months earlier, being embraced by the grim specter of Death, who is, incidentally, wearing a t-shirt for some reason. Death doesn't wear a t-shirt! C'mon, man!
So, some people use the Facebook for dubious purposes, fine, but surely this isn't the norm? Right?
Meet
Tragic, but it gets worse. As I mentioned earlier, I've got a big ol' hard on for Facebook and I'm not the only one. People all over this great land are obsessed with this thing. Some of us can regulate our obsession though, maintain our buzz, if you will. Other people, like Shannon Johnson of Colorado, cannot. On the morning of September 20, Johnson drew a bath for her 13-month-old son ("the water level was a little higher than usual, but she apparently figured it was safe") and then popped over to the other room (!!!) to check out what her peeps were up to on Facebook. After commenting on a few of her friend's updates--most likely with witty bon mots like "OMG, gurl, you sooo crazzzy," "LOL," and "OMG! I Heart Bruno Mars!!1"--she checked in on her son, found him happily splashing away, and returned to Facebook to cook up some pseudo-quiche in Cafe World. She returned to the bathroom a little while later to find her child face-down and motionless in the tub. Johnson now faces up to 43 years in jail.
43 years? She left her child alone in a tub to make fake meals for no one! To be fair, I've never played Cafe World. Maybe it is so ignore-your-bathing-baby-in-the-other-room fun that once engaged you can do nothing but ignore your bathing baby in the other room and whip up ersatz foodstuffs for hours on end. Probably not, but maybe.
Next time: We haven't even scratched the surface! There are more weird creeps waiting in the wings. Bullies, vandals, and girls for sale are coming soon.