They found me. I don’t know how, but they found me.
by Wendy on October 5, 2009
in Laughable life
Someone, or some mind-reading cyborg terror app, has blown my cover: people keep trying to make me their Facebook friends.
They found me. I don’t know how, but they found me.
Not, no the Libyans, Marty. The Facebook legions. The many proud members of the Wendy Wetzel Should Join Facebook Group.
I confess: I’ve had an account for a while, just sitting there reserving my name for me. But I am not, repeat NOT, going to start using the thing until my demands are met.
Yes, I have demands. I will not give you something awesome (me) for nothing. You cannot shame me into your gang. (You must bribe me.)
WENDY WETZEL’S FACEBOOK DEMANDS:
- At least 100 people must join the Wendy Wetzel Should Join Facebook Group. (This is a reduction from 500, so be thankful you have a shot.) These must be people I actually know, not creepy random stalker people.
- This post must receive at least 50 comments telling me you joined WWSJFB and why.
- You must convince me that the fact that I never got a Xanga or MySpace page before they went the way of the parachute pant (that is, lame fads of the past) is not all the more reason I should just wait it out for Facebook to go out of style too.
- You must convince me that the amount of time I’ve wasted just talking about FB will not be dwarfed by the time I waste on it. Or that it will but it’s totally worth it.
- Promise me you’ll never ask me to play Scrabble with you or build a city together or join your mafia or whatever the heck else you nerds do on there. The Internetz are for stalking people from a distance, not pretending we’re holed up in a cabin somewhere during a blizzard.
- Y’all get on da Twitter and follow me. You can link your FB status and Twitter. Twitter takes two minutes to set up; Facebook takes two weeks to figure out how to even read. So this is the least you can do for me.
- Post on the WWSJFB group or on Twitter photos of yourselves on your knees holding signs begging me to join or engaging in other similarly shameless pleading behavior. (When hashtag #WWSJFB is trending on Twitter, you’ll know you’re making progress.)
- Convince me that this will not happen to me! “Why I Left Facebook”
- Convince me that Facebook will not again suddenly declare that they own my everything, forever.
And finally, and this is very important:
10. Promise me you will never, ever, under any circumstances, use “Facebook” as a verb, as in “I facebooked you.” No! You “facebook” me, I’m gonna “outhouse” our “friend”ship. Capiche?
Your move, Facebookers. You want me? Show me what you’ve got.
Um, I’m pretty sure I’m in that group, and I’m pretty sure you should join facebook…. but I can’t use it right now (it’s shut down completely in my current country of residence, but let’s not get into all that).
I lurve fb because it’s so easy to keep in touch with people. seriously!
Easy to keep in touch with old friends, although I can understand your sentiments as I will not Twitter. Can’t access social networks during the day, nor do I get it on my phone. How can you tweet & not fb? Yup, I just used it as a verb. I am a member of wwsjfb or whatever, but I certainly will not degrade myself with your demands. Heh. And you popped up in my “you might know…” window, that’s how I myself found you. Facebook did it to YOU.
WENDY!!!!!!!!!!! You must join because pretty much everyone in Waldport has one. And we need as many ways as possible to stay in contact with you
some of your demands are excessive, girl, but they sure do make fun reading! Since i started ‘facebooking’ (Yep, its a verb.) I’ve been found by a lot of boys that used to call me mom, oh wait, they still do as in “Is this really mom// Aaron and Tim’s mom??” It is a fun way to keep in touch with people although some people publish the minutie of their lives….
Wow. Feel like you’re pretty important, eh? It’s totally up to you . . . if you want to continue getting information (when it comes) through your husband instead of directly from me, that’s fine by me. Facebook doesn’t even want you. It told me I might know you and then said, “But just ignore her.” So there. We aren’t even going to try to meet your demands.
{Kidding! Please, please, please join! We can’t meet your demands mostly because we have no control over anything that Facebook does . . . and don’t understand most of what they tell us they are doing! I ignore everyone’s requests for everything but Scrabble, because I enjoy playing Scrabble with my sister, my mom, and my husband without having to get everyone in the same room at the same time! And there have been so many times that I’ve wanted to talk with you, but I just don’t tweet. I don’t get the draw there. And I can’t say anything that short, because, as you know, EVERYTHING that happens to me is fascinating!!! Please!!!)
Just say NO! Call me and I will tell you why.
Wow, you’re officially crazy!
Let me get this straight, you want at least “100″ friends begging you to join Facebook, through Facebook, before you’ll become a member of Facebook? Interesting…
Then you would have us put at least “50″ comments on your blog about how much we want you to be “friends” with us? Hmmmmm…..
I have been a member of the WWSJFB movement for a long time now but have sadly been disappointed in *someones* lack of enthusiasm. However, this I promise you:
1. I do not have a farm, a mafia, a fish tank, a virtual home or any other app that I will annoy you with.
2. I am only “friends” with people that I am actually friends with in “real” life. Yes, that’s right, I actually ignore many of my friend requests AND I don’t feel bad about it!
3. It is the easiest way to contact my friends since they are all (except you, of course) located in one central place : email them, post on their wall, send invitations, mass updates, play date requests, parties, you name it!
4. I am not going to join Twitter. It annoys me and no matter how much I would love having you available to me on FB, I will not be blackmailed to tweet!
5. There are lots of photos of me on FB, probably even one on my knees or holding some sign. Once you are one of my “friends” (I have the tightest security settings) you can feel free to look at them! Aren’t I generous?!
In all seriousness, I really do enjoy Facebook and the more people who join, the more I like it. You don’t have to spend hours on it and it’s easy to set up. The people will come to you, obviously. It’s fun PLUS you can advertise yourself! People can contact you about editing, they can become a “FAN” of the *Witty Wordsmith* and it’s all free. Come on, Wendy! Even if you weren’t popular in HS (and maybe you were!), you can be the Prom Queen of popularity on FB! Your minions are waiting patiently…
You don’t have to befriend everyone who sends you a request. I don’t. You can always choose to ignore certain people’s updates because, like Joyce said, some people update way too much and it’s very annoying. The link you referred us to about “Why I left Facebook” sounds like a girl with low self-esteem who can’t handle other people doing anything different than her.
I think it’s funny how you refer to Facebook as a fading trend yet you have a Twitter? Haha. I think Twitter is possibly the dumbest internet trend, personally. A shorter, lame version of Facebook. I will never join Twitter.
In all seriousness though, I love Facebook because it’s a fun way to keep in touch with friends and people you haven’t seen/talked to in a long time. Plus it’s makes party events much easier!
Wendy! Come to the wonderful world of Facebook. You will never be the same again… or something like that.
Honey, you don’t have to accept friend requests – see Why I Left Facebook. If you don’t want to know about what people are doing, just unfriend them or simply block them. That’s what I do to my little sister – I tell you, everything she writes is so consuming. Oh, wait, will she be reading this?
Seriously, though, there are friend requests out there in the ephemeral reaches of cyberspace waiting for me to accept them, but I’m not going to. I didn’t like those people in high school, I’m certainly not going to “friend” them now. I will lay claim to using “facebook” as a verb, though. How else to refer to it?
It does make party events much easier – and meetings at church (which are kind of like parties, right??). There, I think I’ve waxed poetical longer than Beka did. Hee, hee.
I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure you’re already on facebook. :/
http://www.facebook.com/wendymwetzel
Well if this isn’t the most narcissistic blog post I’ve ever read.
(aren’t they all 
Don’t join facebook…I don’t care. It’s your loss. Facebook is the best way for me to stay connected to the people I care about who live far away from. (and even with people who live close to me.) I can stay connected with you through this blog and Aaron’s facebook, so I don’t care either way. However, it’s your loss, b/c you can’t see what’s been going on in my life! You won’t see my pictures or videos, you won’t read my updates, and you won’t get to celebrate Lions victories with me in the virtual world. I’m beginning to think you don’t like me! haha… good luck in your fight against peer pressure and pop culture!
I think you need to calm down. It obvious that people wish to use facebook to connect with you. Why go through all this hassle to make yourself feel special? It should be your own personal choice, not a task that the masses have to go through in order to get you to join. I for one will not advocate you coming to facebook. You join if you want, not if others so desire. And when i say ‘join’ i mean put it to use, not have an account ready and able to use.
On another note. *waves* Hi Wendy!
Some very convincing arguments and pleas here, folks. But are they enough to outweigh the wisdom of my father (Denny, comment 6)?
Kevin and Dick: yes, it is highly narcisstic, isn’t it? Perhaps I should revise my previous blog post to reflect that my idol is truly myself.
Then again, if y’all bothered to participate, maybe you’re so vain, you probably think this post is about you… (Catchy, eh?)
This is Beau, not Beka.
I am not sure that your demands are worth it. Good luck with them.
By the way, you twitter, but don’t do Facebook. Hmmmm, seems like someone really enjoys fads that will go out like parachte pants already. I am not sure that twitter is anywhere near as cool as parachute pants were though.
Good luck with your demands. I have a feeling that you will need it.
Beau
Boy, when I made that group to show you how easy it is to stay in touch with people online, I did not expect it to backfire so spectacularly.
I actually go back and forth. If you are really _that_ offended by fb then certainly you should not join. Or rather you should delete your account, since technically you have already joined. I’d delete the group and we’d be square. And I will never never never again tease happy fun editor.
I think you are missing out. Fb is so much more than keeping a blog and tweeting. It’s a way of connecting with events people are participating in or books they are reading, causes they care about. You don’t always get that from blogs. I personally enjoy the apps, but not everyone does (your brother really only uses Visual Bookshelf, surprising I know) and that’s ok. I third(?) the event option. It helps sooo much to be able to schedule events through fb. Evite is a pain in the butt and not everyone answers.
You have a lot of control over who sees what on your profile, your status, everything. You can also choose what you want to read in your newsfeed. And you invest as much time as you want. So, if you are sick of being on the computer, you glance at it and move on. If you’re like me, it’s a lifeline to others in similar parenting situations, advice and encouragement.
And farmville is awesome.
Now I want to call your dad and find out what he knows.
later: you could always try fb for a month and if it becomes too banal, silly, or too much of a waste of time, cancel your account. I’d give it a month anyway, that’s enough time to get a feel for it.
Dear Wendy, I think you should join facebook, because it is a great way to know and be known without actually communicating. You just peek in on other peoples’ lives through pictures posted and their status. You can control who sees your facebook too, so you can post cute pictures of Anna for people you know to enjoy.
I promise not to invite you to join any odd games or to use facebook as a verb. I do not do those things anyway. I don’t think facebook is a fad either. It has remained popular for a very long time and it’s popularity seems to be growing. I hope you will help it grow. 
girl, you are off your rocker. and also very demanding. but I’m a FB fan, so you should probably ignore my opinion.
Wendy! Love this post! so glad you are considering joining fb, oh wait, you already have!
so the fact that you have a photo up means you’ve been on for at least 2 weeks, or it isn’t taking you as long as you thought it would to lean the fb deal. 
Warning: random thoughts from Kenzle below
i totally agree with Josh- your blog is great (i’ve been following it since, well, you had your super old one when i was a freshperson in college, you know, prose & cons?) but we smallport residents need as many ways to to stay in contact with you – we miss you lots!
btw, didn’t i read somewhere that you were missing overhearing random statements from your crazy young friends and being part of that crazy world? i think fb might just be a way to stay connected to that crazy world.
even if fb does not out live us, wouldn’t it be great to take part in the joys of fb while it is still around? even former parachute pant wearing ppl would admit that though they are clearly not in fashion now, when they were groovy- they were amazing to wear & there is some part of them that lives on in the hearts of those who wore them? so, if fb does eventually get benched won’t we will still be remembering all those great times we had on fb when we are 80 something?
story time: so, i’m pretty sure it has been about a yr since i started making fun of my friends from college for loving Twilight (i know i scoffed at the thought of their infatuation (maybe that is a little harsh), er, their appreciation of Twilight). i thought, seriously? who wants to read a book (or watch a movie) about creepy vampires? isn’t that a little ridiculous ppl?
– i finally watched twilight a few weeks ago & guess what? i really liked it despite the creepy vampire stuff. b/c of my i-despise-twilight-attitude i missed out on enjoying Twilight for an entire yr – but the thing is, i had no idea i was missing out until after i “gave in” and watched it, became a part of it! so, friend, maybe you should try fb out, test it, see if the glove fits, and then see if you want to join fb, b/c that is how you will REALLY know you were meant to join. maybe that is why you already have a fb pg or why you wrote this blog entry, who knows? but i do know that fb, though i was crazy opposed at first to it too, has often been a great tool, one that i think you would enjoy once you give it a try. 
ha ha ha.
so, wanting to stay up with the culture – and well, chuck was running out of movies that i hadn’t yet seen
being active on fb allows you the privilege of seeing another angle of “the world beneath.”
plus, if you add me as a friend on fb, you will get to know when i have new youtube videos or when something crazy happens
it also might eliminate the whole calling you super late b/c i forgot about the time difference deal 
humm, i think this is enough random thoughts from me for now! but anyway, i miss you & i hope all is well!
~ the famous Kenzle K
p.s. here’s some advice from a special friend, “it isn’t real unless it’s on fb!”
oh, yeah. Wendy, what is your homepage? it wouldn’t be google would it?
I think you should join facebook. I don’t have anything else to add that 20+ other comments brought to light.
Plus, you already joined facebook. The real issue is whether you should USE it.
OK Wendy, you have spent WAY to much time not joining/using! Sign up neighbor!!!
I joined the group a while back. Just sayin’, you should probably stop being selfish and come into contact with all these people who love you…