Social Experiment

I recently had to undertake a social experiment which required the most delicate of touches; a finesse that had hitherto been missing from much of my work on the road of late. It centred around a woman, a photo and the unwritten rulebook that is Facebook.

It was an intriguing insight into the way many humans (one out of every fourteen according to Zuckerberg) now communicate as well as the completely ridiculous method by which we conduct our social dealings. It was at once ludicrous and insightful, and since you should know, here’s what happened. (All names have been abbreviated to protect their identities and in some cases their dignity).

The Premise

Late 2010 I went on a road trip with Svetlana B, Chris G and Tom C. The destination was Stone Henge, which by all accounts is a let-down, but is also something that needs to be ‘ticked off’ from every idiot’s-guide traveller’s list of places in the world to see as if it validates your claims as a traveller and allows you to think you have really lived, when in actual fact all you’ve done is got drunk and throw tomatoes at each other, or got drunk and seen the full moon at a beach in Asia, or got stoned and seen Anne Frank’s house or got drunk and got drunk at Octoberfest. Big fucking deal, people. Tick off? Fuck off. I digress.

To make the trip more exciting, Grevi… I mean Chris G, decided it would be a good idea to take photos of fat people. Seeing as we had 3 digital cameras and a polaroid, this would not pose a problem. Any lingering doubts posed by a sweeping moral objection from any of those in the car seemed to have been forgotten also, or perhaps absent altogether.

Fat people aside, we had a look at some apparently marvellous stones about which very little is known. The best view was definitely from afar and even that wasn’t all that good. Thus from my altogether too-close precipice I surmised that there definitely is an adequate substitute to being liberated of 15 pounds and seeing some ancient rocks; it’s called the internet and the fat people are much more entertaining. Svetlana B did, however, manage to take a superb photo of the three lads jumping high as if doing a star-jump, in front of The Henge. On her camera.

The French: they stink, they are rude, they hate Americans.

The Dilemma

In January of 2011, Svetlana B and myself split up. After parting ways, we remained not just friends but ‘Facebook Friends’. Since the split was seemingly amicable, there was no need to sever all ties and we both agreed to catch up once the dust had settled. Time passed and the odd Facebook message was exchanged enquiring about returning some linen (which required the first post-break-up meeting) and when she wanted her suitcase back (which I still have. Does that mean I won the break-up? What would constitute a break-up win? Am I the only person that judges the results of a relationship on luggage? Perhaps).

Further time passed with zero communication. Even more time passed and I sent a further Facebook message wishing her happy birthday, with an inquisitive tone. I was hoping for a reply. I got nothing. Nada. Not even a thanks. It seemed pretty clear that she was no longer in the business of talking to me. And that’s fine. Maybe she hates me, maybe I used an incorrect tone in my email, or maybe once all bets are off, there is no longer entitlement (yes, that’s definitely it). However I was enquiring about her with the utmost of good intentions, not because I had second thoughts, but perhaps through some misguided sentiment I still harboured. Anyway, no Facebook contact + no real life human contact = relationship dying/dead.

Now, what you need to understand about The Dude – and I’m paraphrasing here – is, I run a pretty tight friendship circle on The Facebook. If you are not my friend in real life, you are not my friend in cyber-life. Do I have 435 friends in real life? Probably not? So why would my online brand need to lie? There are, of course, some exceptions but I won’t go into these other than to say that it’s like keeping up appearances with real people you only see in certain real-life social circles. So one night, while instituting another cull, Svetlana B got cut on the basis that she probably didn’t want to speak to me anyway and why would I want to keep seeing all the things she’s doing in Bilbao and Paris? No reason.

Not even 5 minutes had passed before I realised the gravity of my most recent friendship cull. The Photo! (By the way, it’s probably the best photo anyone has ever taken. The historical context matched with the athleticism make it the modern day equivalent of Pheidippides’ run to Athens 2500 years ago).

The Hypothesis

Needless to say, I erred in judgement by cutting her from my hallowed circle of friends without first ensuring I had taken property of the photo. Svetlana had somehow won the break-up while I tricked myself into thinking I was victorious with a suitcase. On the flipside, it is carry-on. But still…. I needed that photo.

Something drastic had to happen. After much humming and hawing with Tom C, I decided the best course of action, not just to retrieve the photo but for the benefit of social experementia, was The Re-Friend. I had De-Friended, and just as quickly I would have to Re-Friend, all for the sake of a photo I hadn’t seen in half a year. Would it be worth it? Time would tell.

The Methodology

While it’s a simple thing to send a Friend Request with a message asking for a photo, this was a much more delicate situation, not least because I was trying to Re-Friend when she didn’t even know that I’d De-Friended her. I would have to use all my powers of persuasion to convince her to look past the fact that I had just cut her out of my life (because it’s only official once Facebook says so) and go to the trouble of finding this photo and emailing it back to me.

There was some debate as to what constituted a necessary request. Did there need to be lies, for example? Tom C suggested that I say that Chris G had contracted cancer/AIDS and was desperate to see the photo in his dying days. Fearing a karmic setback from which I could not recover, I decided to leave out any impending death warrants. And if you are now wondering about the comic stylings of Tom C, please read his MMP profile. So the message was sent in a friendly and slightly pleading tone.

The Result

A whole month past with no response. Then one Sunday evening, lo and behold, my inbox (not the Facebook kind) flashed. I think the result speaks for itself.

The Leap

Conclusions

It’s hard to draw a conclusion other than the most obvious one, which is that I could have just called and asked for the photo and I would have avoided all the unnecessary questioning of whether my integrity had suffered for some reason that I was unaware of. But the point was to Re-Friend after a De-Friend and to plot the results. Basically I got a photo (awesome!) and further subverted the course of social behaviour between humans in the 21st century, thereby confirming how much of a moron me and every 14th person on the planet is, since this is essentially what Facebook has been doing all along.