Respect Authority

About a month ago, I dutifully shared with you dear readers the ongoing melodrama of one of my Facebook friends, who since our initial joining has completely slipped from my mind as a person of note. Ostensibly someone I knew in middle school, the girl I affectionately dubbed Sally has since become little more than a source of online amusement, a reality fueled by a series of public disclosures and rants about her imminent nuptials, and her fiancée’s awful family. If you missed the boat on that one, here’s your refresher.

Since then, and in my next stop on Pathetic Road, I’ve been actively checking up on Sally, looking for new developments on the wedding front. Outside of the obvious choosing of centerpieces and airing of dress-size grievances, little seemed to be happening — and so my vigilance had fallen off. In fact, Sally’s Nov. 8 status update — “…is deleting people from Facebook” — had me fairly convinced that her culling of unnecessary friends would spell the imminent end of our online acquaintance, to be expected considering our relationship is defined entirely by my investigating her personal life. Surprisingly though, I made the cut.
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One of the many pleasures afforded me by the ubiquity of Facebook is the ease with which I can keep track of the personal lives of people I barely know. Although privacy issues, coupled with long-overdue common sense, have yielded an abundance of secret profiles, there was a time in Facebook’s adolescence when everyone friended pretty much everyone.

As a result of my own early Facebook whoring, I happen to be friends with a girl, let’s call her Sally, whose life is no longer in any way tied to my own. Based on our shared friends it would seem we attended middle school together, but I could neither confirm nor deny this from seeing her picture now. If she were to pass me on the street, I would consider her a stranger.

So it was with trepidation, and no small amount of shame, that I began earlier this week following what I will call the Saga of Sally’s Wedding. See, Facebook has of late developed a “note” function, where users can post their ramblings for any of their friends, and potentially the world at large, to read and comment on. Some might consider this – the constant public disclosure of one’s random thoughts and complaints to the entire digital community – a bit inane, or a least vain. We here at RA call it blogging.

Since Sally’s Saga has become quite heated, I felt it high time I shared it with an even larger population, at the risk of both violating her privacy, and getting sued. But hey, who doesn’t want to be part of a precedent-setting Facebook lawsuit? I anticipate making millions.

See, Sally is marrying ….Fred. And Fred’s sister, Lucy, hates Sally. With a passion. I’m not entirely sure why, since Sally is, let’s say, less than articulate and the whole thing is still hazy to me. But Sally is now debating whether or not to invite Lucy to her wedding, since she hates Lucy. Fred, surprisingly, seems ambivalent about his sister’s attendance – so Sally is seeking advice from friends and peers as to how to approach the situation. For the record, Sally is 23. Read More ›