The Dot Dot Dot List

Sometimes in life, we make regretful decisions. Like the time you thought you'd add a little extra flair to your cooking one night and ended up eating a pile of atrocities. Now, think of this in terms of Facebook, only, instead of adding ingredients you are adding acquaintance-friends.

"Hmm, this looks like it will taste good. Why not?" you think as you add in the spices.

"Yeah, I kind of know them, they seemed nice. Why not?" you think as you press the "confirm" button.

If within 30 seconds they proceed to fill up my personal messages with annoyingly generic small talk or shower me with compliments that are littered with broken English, I have already raised the red flag.

Guy: "hey"

Me: "Hey, what's up?"

Guy: "nm"

This is going nowhere. No response for you.

Guy: "Dam u bad"

Goodbye to you, sir.

And there are also the ones who go from harmless to obsessed in a matter of days. Every single time you log on to Facebook chat, it's like a surprise attack the minute your little bubble turns green. D-List Facebook stalkers, those ones, by the way. Too obvious.

So, what to with these people? Of course Facebook offers the option to delete and/or block them... but if you're like me, you'd rather do something different. You simply add them to a different friends list. This way, you can block the things they see and appear offline when you are actually online. My separate friends list for annoying stalker guys is eloquently titled, "...", which symbolizes my reaction when they do something irritating.

"Dot Dot Dot List for you, my dear!" I say after staring at their bothersome comment.

I bring this up because we have been talking about secretly hiding behind technology to avoid real human interaction. This is an example of how we secretly hide behind technology to avoid virtual interaction. None of the guys know they are on the list, and some of them know I find them annoying while others don't. The problem is that Facebook tries to make us feel like we are obliged to add people we "kind of" know, and it wants us to feel badly if we dare cross the taboo line of deleting or blocking them. I have fallen victim to these feelings, but I am not sure if it is better or worse that I hide from them on Facebook without them knowing I do. Probably worse. I don't know where that side of me came from, but it grew with my Facebook addiction.

The morals of the story? Facebook can bring out strange sides of people. Some girls attract psycho stalkers.