Happy Friends Day to Us All
For those of you that don’t live under a rock, or actually have a life, Facebook recently released a new feature called “Happy Friends Day”. It automatically curates a selection of photos from your profile (and those of your friends) to remind you what good times you’ve had with your lovely circle of pals. For someone without babies or an engagement photo shoot, it may even prevent you from upping your Zoloft for at least another few minutes.
Facebook presumably put some time into making this collection as accurate as possible, using the Almighty Big Data and fancy algorithms. With friend lists including hundreds, even thousands of people met over many years, it would be easy to screw this up and select irrelevant photos. Or worse yet, ones containing memories that maybe you don’t want to relive. It would be really easy to screw this up. But Facebook is smart, right? (Big Data, dammit, Big Data!)
Here now is a summary of the images presented to me (set to a lovely, lilting, upbeat piano riff):
(1) A photo of a family member looking sad and pensive, perhaps pondering his recent divorce.
(2) A different family member scowling, whom I barely speak to, due to deep-seated issues involving tragedies and the complicated aftermath.
(3) A dear friend currently involved in a tricky custody battle, posing with his young child.
No no, please, go on…
We sure have.
(4) A photo from years ago, of me with a friend I’d fallen for. Ever the bastion of discretion, I’m wearing a piece of his clothing and grinning like an idiot.
(5) Another old picture from an event where a friend took his girlfriend, days after propositioning me (I was, despicably, disappointed).
Indeed.
(6) A selfie my dad took of the two of us on a plane, moments after asking a beautiful man seated next to me to please move, so that the two of us could spend the trans-Atlantic flight together. (Better luck next time the most attractive person on a plane of 400 oversized tourists gets randomly handed to me for 7 straight hours.)
(7) A photo of me with a guy who ghosted me. In 2009, before ghosting was even a thing.
Do I have to?
(8) My birthday. Ok that was pretty sweet. I flew to Chicago on Virgin America who was also celebrating its birthday. I told every flight attendant it was my birthday too, until they finally gave me a free beach ball intended for children with ADHD.
And for the grand finale,
(9) the time I got drunk with a former, sweet, motherly boss at a table where bestiality came up no less than 4 times.
Oh, what the hell. Happy Friends Day to us all.
