A few days ago, I decided to hop on my burner Facebook account to look at what's on the marketplace. I usually surveyed some of the offers for anything that might catch my attention. Some budget graphics card, some perephernalia that someone decided they no longer needed. Just window shopping.
Suddenly I found myself searching up the profile of one of my close friends. We'd known each other for over 15 years, and we were Facebook friends before I deleted my personal account. I looked at his profile and noticed that his photo had not changed in years. Clicking on his friends list brought me to a list of very familiar faces.
Over the past 10 years, most of us had drifted away from Facebook. But what I found interesting was that for the most part, my friends had kept their profile photos the same as from when we were much younger. It was like a time capsule of our youth. It brought back memories of when Facebook used to be a fun place to hang out with people.
I remember when friends would post emo song lyrics overlaid atop grungy Photoshopped black-and-white photos. We would post sad or inspirational quotes. We would set our status to things like "sigh..." in an adolescent attempt to garner some form of attention. We would post songs we were listening to, photos of our weekends, we would invite each other to play Farmville.
The Internet truly was a simpler time back then. Or maybe we were just simpler.
As I looked back on some of those old photos, I realized that many of these people whom I used to be extremely close to are complete strangers to me. Maybe we only became friends through pure happenstance and proximity. Maybe we were just friends because we happened to take the same classes during the same years and lived in the same neighborhoods. Most of them have moved away now, and many more keep moving away.
I don't feel sadness about it anymore. I don't really feel anything about anything anymore. But it was an interesting trip down memory lane.