Facebook: To friend or not to friend

There are a lot of questions out there, and there are certainly plenty of answers, but riddle me this: What did we do with ourselves before Facebook?

I literally can't even remember what I did before Facebook came along to document every picture, quote, relationship status, "Like" or interaction of virtually every person ... and their mothers.

One second you're just checking your Facebook before you head out for the afternoon and two hours later you find yourself still on the couch unable to tear your eyes away from some strange guy's pictures that you know only because he has mutual friends with a friend of your best friend's boyfriend. That's Facebook for you, making the world smaller one "friend in common" at a time. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for letting me know how many people I kind of sort of know through my kind of sort of friends!

Despite my deep and undying love for Facebook, I can understand why some people say social networking outlets like Facebook are detracting from our generation's ability to partake in personal communication. It might be true considering that I've found myself (depressingly often) walking by people unsure of whether or not it's OK to say hello to them because I'm not sure if I know them in real life or just from Facebook stalking. But, it's all about balance -- think about all the pros that Facebook has to battle the cons.

First of all, the expression "Facebook-stalking" that seems to have permeated every conversation from the business school to Modlin, is actually significantly less creepy than legit standing-by-your-window-and-videotaping-you when-you're-getting-undressed-stalking.

I don't know about you, but wouldn't you rather some random Richmond student stalk your pictures from lodges on Friday instead of actually following you around at lodges on Friday? Facebook-stalking is a much safer, less personally invasive method of social creeping if you ask me.

Also, I think Facebook has made our generation particularly proficient investigators. From just a few small tidbits of information, you can make some stranger a friend and look at his pictures, see what he likes and read his correspondences with others.

You can spot, from across the room, a very cute Sig Ep, get on Brenden's or Joe's or Dom's page, check to see if he is friends with the cute boy, friend him and become internet acquaintances. It is an investigatory skill that is certainly creating a generation of pseudo-detectives on the hunt for skanky pictures, long-lost boyfriends, potential new soul mates and undergraduate gossip.

Now, those are just a few social perks of Facebook, but let's talk about how it has completely revolutionized the flirting scene. You can find out if a guy is single, what his interests are, what kind of music he listens to and who he hangs out with in just a few clicks.

Once you find all of this golden and indispensable information, you can look to the left side of your screen, about halfway up the page, and find a mutual friend who can invite you both over on Saturday for a pre-game, where you can strike up a conversation with him, happen to mysteriously have all the same interests as he does, perhaps drop a lie about how you saw one of his favorite bands in concert and BAM, it's the blossoming beauty of a wonderfully genuine relationship in the making.

And don't even judge right now, you know that you have at one point in your life used Facebook to stalk a potential crush, creep on a new freshman, find a long-lost friend who gained a TON of weight in college, keep track of your crazy uncle, look at that pregnant chick from your high school's small and innocent child because she's chosen to put up pictures from conception to age 4. Some people just take advantage of their resources more than others -- can't hate on someone for using Facebook to enhance their social and dating life to the max!

OK, so say maybe the Facebook culture isn't your thing. Maybe you're into making real friends instead of internet friends. Maybe you'd rather spend your time outdoors in the real world than in your sweatpants on your couch eating pizza and looking at all the pictures from Homecoming weekend (some of them may include completely trashed alumni at lodges or Sean Casey in the background), maybe you'd rather future employers not see you doing that keg stand in nothing but pink spandex and a unitard, or maybe you just prefer not to get caught up in the latest pop culture fads. But despite these very legitimate reasons to avoid Facebook, you cannot deny that even it has its environmental and political perks too.

For instance, can you imagine the sheer number of trees we are saving by having online "event invitations?"

It would take A LOT of paper to invite every single one of your friends to a downtown rager or an event at the Pier -- but instead of wasting both time and paper with snail mail, you can send out environmentally friendly invites in just a few short seconds.

And not only can you send these paper-free invites, your guests can also let you know if they are attending, if they might attend or if they have no interest in going to your event in a similarly paper-free manner -- simultaneously saving trees and publicizing your events. Can you think of a better way to be a host and environmentalist?

Say you find yourself perusing the New York Times online while you drink your morning coffee and you stumble upon a very interesting article that you would like to share with your friends, but you know if you bring it up in conversation they probably won't go online and search for it on the Times website. So, what do you do with this intellectual dilemma? You post the link on your Facebook page!

If your friends are good friends, they will probably stalk you at least once that day, and because they like to talk to you and identify with your interests, they will at least make the effort to skim the title and topic sentences. The same goes for funny, educational, interesting or annoying YouTube videos -- you post "Boys will be Girls" on one person's wall and four hours later that random chick from your English class has a quote from it on her status. Facebook is the perfect forum for the exchange of information.

And even if you're not really that into Facebook, you're probably a great person who worries about his or her friends.

So, in the event that you absolutely cannot find your friend and you haven't heard from her in a while, you can check her recent Facebook statuses. If she has a slew of depressing song lyrics, you can conclude that she may be found in bed, eating her feelings, surrounded by used Puffs Plus with Lotion (so that every good cry is accompanied by nose moisturizing).

Or maybe you just walked by your friend and she was running late so you couldn't approach her but she looked insanely happy, so you check her status and it says something along the lines of "JUST GOT INTO LAW SCHOOL!!! RAGE RAGE RAGE!"

You may conclude that she just looked so excited because she has a successful life ahead of her. Or maybe your friend is acting strangely and kind of sad and mopey but won't tell you why.

You could check her status and if it goes something like: "Nothing hurts more than realizing he meant everything to you, but you meant nothing to him," you might conclude that her latest heartbreakingly attractive crush recently just found himself with a new girlfriend, and it wasn't her. Jerk.

Facebook: helping you read people's minds one status at a time!

So I leave you with a quote from the very poorly casted Justin Timberlake in the new movie The Social Network: "We lived in farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're gonna live on the Internet!"

Maybe a bit dramatic, but could the Richmond Bubble function without the Internet or would it burst into email-less, Blackboard-less, Facebook-less oblivion?