Tante Kathy

I'm an aunt! Well, I've been an aunt for 26 years, and have known I was an aunt for about 18, but now I am listed as an aunt on Facebook, so it is finally official. ;)

My two nieces are Jenny (age 26) and Sandra (22). Jenny is married and they have two daughters, age 1 and 4. We've been chatting and looking through each others' photos. Sandra posted a whole new album yesterday, full of pics of them when they were little and also of Jenny's family. I am SO excited about the whole thing.

Meanwhile, my Dad left Facebook. I couldn't figure out what his never-ending gripe was with it, until I was talking to him yesterday about all this. He said that his first wife (Siggi's mom, before my mom) tried to friend him on FB. It has freaked him out ever since, that people he doesn't want to be in touch with can see him on there and make contact with him. (If you adjust your settings, you can control all that.) He hasn't been on there at all since the first month or so after he joined, so it's really not any big difference to me.

It's very interesting that Facebook stirs such strong emotion from people- positive and negative. Y'all know I absolutely love it. I think it's such a great social tool and a fabulous way to stay far more connected with friends and family, particularly ones who live outside your area, than you would otherwise.

My dad, Scott and Julie, KathyL, JeffC and Jeff cannot stand it. Not a casual disinterest- they are active haters of it. Two things seem to be at the forefront of their disdain: unwanted contact with people they don't want to talk to (especially old boyfriends/girlfriends) and privacy issues. I am always careful with privacy online, so I get that. Facebook likes to default new privacy settings to "open" which I do not appreciate, but as long as you maintain your settings, you can be as private as you want to be on there. Set the whole thing to only be viewable by you, and you have your own private playground... for what, I don't know, but just saying you can.

And like I told Julie... While she cringes getting new friend requests, I am thrilled to see a new one pop up. It's a very basic difference in approach. She was highly disturbed that people she knew (including me) tried to friend her when she briefly joined just to access some pictures from her daughter's school trip to Europe a few weeks ago.

KathyL- "I don't want to talk to my high school friends." Just don't friend them.

There is only one old friend of mine- KathyK- whom I would not friend on Facebook, if she ever approached me. I have never looked for her and haven't seen her on any other friends' Facebooks, so yay. And ex-boyfriends/girlfriends/hubbies/wives- again, if you don't want to friend them, then just don't. The good news is that if you have no desire to be in contact with them, they probably don't want to contact you either. (OK, except in Dad's case.)

As Cathy has found out, if you actually "block" someone on FB (the ultimate shut-out), not only can they not see you or search for you, or see your posts or comments on mutual friends' pages, but you don't see theirs either. There ya go.

Did I mention I was just united with my nieces because of Facebook?! Woohoo!