Unacceptable Facebook Apologies

Yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook and apologized to his entire “friends” how he kept breaking promises, how he felt bad, and that he chooses work over his social life because of his desire to become successful in his career. His long post called for justification.

I didn’t respond. I refused.

No. I will not accept your apology. Not over Facebook.

No, I will not sympathize with you because the 30+ other “friends” that “like” your post and comment on them sympathizes and/or empathizes with you.

Because I value our friendship more than just a Facebook post. Where’s the integrity? It’s a Facebook post. It’s not real. You can write an entire novel about your life, but what about it? What impact does it make on me? On our friendship?

I find Facebook statuses to be a selfish act. Why? Because we write things to get attention. We write things to get as many “likes” as we can because we need to feel important. Because we have to. Because we need to know we are “likable” with our Facebook friend community.

I know, because I looked back at my old posts and cringe at some of the things I wrote. I share certain things because I knew I was going to get “this many likes” and the only reason I wrote it to get the attention of a certain person. Or the entire Facebook community.

Sure, there are certain posts where it is deemed to be attentive because it’s a publicity stunt for a moral cause like cancer, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, women’s harassment, etc. That I understand.

But, friendships?

Maybe I am being harsh. Maybe, I view friendship differently than other people. I have a high regard to friendships as I do with family, because I grew up in a different culture and world.

All I can say is that I do understand where my friend is coming from, because I am career-driven as well; I am ambitious just like he is and, I care about my work as much as he does. We don’t see it as work, we see it as our passion – as part of who we are. That’s why we are friends.

The difference is: where is the integrity and the value of our friendship?

We cannot always rely on Facebook for our self-esteem. We cannot always rely on Facebook for forgiveness. We cannot always rely on Facebook for redemption. We have become a generation fixated on that. We post things to ease our self-consciousness. We need validation by our peers because we need to know that what we did was “right.” We need to feel accepted by Facebook friends. We need validation of who we are. Because, we rely on Facebook as our social image. We are dependent on Facebook.

We need to start learning how to love ourselves without Facebook.

We need to start, as a generation, owning up to our mistakes, without Facebook and start learning how to owning it ourselves.