Worlds Collide

Sometimes Facebook is a scary thing.

Sure, it's a fantastic way to keep up with what your friends are doing, catch up and reconnect with old friends, and to join in a more "global" conversation about things that are important to our society. Granted that global conversation also has the propensity to include funny video clips, and the omnipresent personality quizzes, but it's also brought a lot of people into the very important discussions of civil rights, marriage equality, health care reform, etc.

None of that scares me. Well, to be honest, sometimes what some people who are friends of mine SAY in those conversations is pretty damn scary, but the fact that there's open dialogue, helps that. Open dialogue helps to bring about mutual understanding and acceptance. At least that's what I tell myself.

What scares me is that WORLDS COLLIDE!

For instance, last night I was having drinks with Rosie and her husband James while they are vacationing at Disney World. Rosie is a relatively new friend, and last night was the first time we've actually met in person. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and I live in the Orlando, Florida area. I know her via the DIS, a Disney fan site that has a forum for Gay and Lesbian Disney fans and their families and friends. Rosie and I are both very active on the GLBT forum, and have struck up a friendship. So she, along with some other people that I enjoy chatting with on the DIS, have become Facebook friends as well; and many of them are becoming real life friends, too. The wonders of the internet age. Friends that we've never met.

I commented to Rosie that I'd recently gotten a "Friend Suggestion" from Facebook, and that it when I clicked on that person's name to see why Facebook suggested that I become friends with her, it turned out that she was a friend of Rosie's and a friend of someone with whom I attended Junior High School in a small town in Colorado! When I mentioned the name of this friend, it turns out that she had worked at the same company as James for a time.

See? Worlds collide.

Someone that I knew in my childhood in Colorado, and hadn't seen in over twenty years worked with someone I had just met, who was married to someone I chat with online every day. Six degrees of separation be damned, we were down to one degree of separation, here.

It's scary! People from my childhood shouldn't know my current online friends! People that I went to college with shouldn't be in the same show with actor's that we met at the Adventurers Club here in Orlando! (yeah, that happened too. I found out when they were both tagged in the same Facebook photo gallery).

Worlds should maintain their orbits (around ME, of course!) and people that I knew in one place shouldn't cross over into other "worlds". It's just not right!

Some people who've encountered this evil phenomenon have commented to me that it's "comforting" to know that we're all so interconnected. "The world is small, and getting smaller, isn't it wonderful!"

Like HELL it is! I've done some embarrassing shit in my life. I don't need these people comparing stories! There's only so much dirt any one person should have on me, dammit!

As I said. Scary. Very, very scary!

I'm almost tempted to go into hiding and change my name and start over somewhere new where nobody knows me.

But in the age of Facebook . . . where exactly would that be?