Facebook is getting harder

After resisting for months, I gave in last spring and established a profile on Facebook. May, I think it was. It was so exciting at first – intoxicating, really. I added a friend every day, judiciously weighing who I was extending my private life to. I was – and still am – careful not to have too many photos. Careful not to put too much personal information up there for the world to see.

I posted often – sometimes several times a day – in those early heady weeks. I watched carefully what other people wrote for their status updates, and I decided that I most liked the cryptic ones. The ones that really got me curious about the meaning behind the message. They seemed to be the most likely to draw a comment from a friend – the most likely to spark a conversation. And I love those back-and-forth Facebook conversations. Who wouldn't want to know more about why "Beau Wilkinson wishes she could"?

Then a friend sent me this article, called "The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers". I figured she wouldn't be sending it to me if I was an annoying Facebooker. So I clicked on the link and sat back for a good read with my coffee (always, always with my coffee). And – even though she probably didn't really think so at all – I realized that, shit oh shit, I'm probably an annoying Facebooker. I admit to having been an Obscurist. But oh god, was I a Self-Promoter, too?

Since reading that piece on CNN.com, I have for the most part stopped posting cryptic updates. I have stopped posting as often as I used to. In fact, because Facebook weirds me out so much now, I've pretty much stopped posting anything at all.

See, back when I had just a handful of Facebook friends, I felt okay about sharing the dumb things that went through my mind. I felt okay about making cheeky statements and putting my opinions out there. I knew that the people in my little friend box were all either current friends, fond acquaintances, writerly types or trusted relatives.

I even gladly added some people from my old high school. Even though they're not all friends of mine – though some are – they seemed fairly innocuous. After all, they knew me better than probably anyone else on Facebook (including trusted relatives). And to be honest, I liked seeing the number on my little friend ticker grow.

Then the true and staggering power of Facebook opened itself up to me. People found me. People whom I hadn't at all considered adding as friends. People whom I hadn't at all considered, period. But that little box in the upper right hand corner of the screen kept bleating out friend requests. And I kept adding them. Because it seemed rude to ignore them.

So now, Facebook has become much more complex. I have friended several people who know me in a professional sense, which makes it impossible – or ill-advised – for me to make wisecracks about my work ethic or about the corporate world. I have friended a parent of one of my ex-students, plus my 12-year-old niece, which makes it impossible for me to write anything about wanting desperately to drink wine all day long. I have friended at least two people who I wish I could unfriend, but I'm so afraid they'll realize it and hate me for it that I keep them in the pile. I have friended some friends and their husbands while leaving other spouses out of the mix entirely. Two women I desperately want to friend – one my ex-best friend, the other a girl I used to diss in high school but who now has grown up and become a writer for CBC Radio – are ignoring me. (How can I apologize if she won't let me in?) And, in a stunning display of stupidity, I've friended my tenants, which precludes me from grumbling about their loud thumping bass or suspecting aloud that they invite their friends over and then do their laundry for them. I can't possibly unfriend them now: they live in my basement! They'll find out for sure and burn the house down. My head aches.

Now I'm a shell of my former vibrant Facebook self. I'm just another silent observer, too freaked out to draw attention to myself.

I still feel an immature stab of envy when I look at a friend's page and see they've got more than 150 friends. I seem to have topped out at around 75. Whether that's because: a) I'm becoming increasingly picky; b) people think I'm a loser; or c) I'm beginning to show my generally neurotic nature in a more public forum, has yet to be determined.

My bet's on c). After all, if I make my living as a writer, how come – after it's been live for over nine months – I've only invited a dozen people to read Infernal Memo?