The Greatest Generation. That's how history will forever remember those who came of age during World War II. For the rest of their lives millions of Americans get to say they were a part of the greatest. They were the Muhammed Ali of generations. The Michael Jordan of generations. Shit, they were the Jenna Jameson of generations. That's pretty bad ass if you ask me, getting to go down as the greatest of all time, and it's kind of interesting to think about. However, thinking about it also makes me sad knowing that my generation probably won't ever be seen that way. Not even close. The greatest generation? We're more like the C+ student of generations. And there's one reason why: Facebook.

Facebook is eating the souls of everyone born between 1981 and 1991. Literally. Facebook is single handedly ruining the arts of social interaction, talking, and drunk dialing and replacing them with poking and drunken wall posting. There used to be a time, not long ago, when you knew you were dating someone because you asked each other out and actually went on dates (mindblowing). Not anymore though. Nowadays you can be seeing someone for a year, sleep over at their apartment 7 days a week, and be godfather to their little brother, but you ain't shit until it says so on Facebook. Seriously. I saw a news piece on ABC or CNN about high school and college students who honestly believed that a relationship was not real until it was posted as a status update on Facebook.

Now, Facebook hasn't always been bad, and sure, it can be semi-useful for sending out party invites and such. In fact, remember when I first heard about Facebook the summer before undergrad I thought it was awesome. I mean, a whole site dedicated to meeting new friends at your school and keeping in touch with old ones from high school (not to mention the fact that it was full of pictures which allowed my friends and I to scope out which girls in our dorm were hot)? I was sold. So much so that I Facebook friended something like 50 people in my dorm on the spot. Well, the first day of college rolled around and I was walking out of my dorm with my freshman year roommate as one of my new "Facebook friends" was walking in. I mentioned to my roommate "I know her! We're facebook friends!" Apparently I said this just a bit too loud, as this girl heard me, turned to face me, and said "Fucking dork." Long story short we're good friends now, but you know what? She was 100% right. Who in their right mind meets friends/dates/acquaintances/lab partners and cell mates on a website?! It's utterly ridiculous!

Gone are the days of actualy having to be personable to meet people, all you need is a mouse and a keyboard. Point in case: I have a buddy, I'll call him Sloppy, who used to Facebook incoming freshmen girls to see who was hot and then friend them. It sounds pathetic on his part, probably because it is, but what's even more pathetic is that the girls actually thought it was cool that an older kid "Facebooked" them and would talk to him. Um....what?

Half of the people I know could probably benefit from a Facebook Anonymous session or two. It seems every 5 minutes, someone I know is running off to check their Facebook Profile. After all, it's been five whole minutes and someone might have friended them, or sent them a digital bumper sticker, or poked them, or wrote on their wall yada yada yada. I have actually seen a person put a face to face conversation on hold, because their phone buzzed letting them know they had a new digital conversation waiting to be read.

What's even worse than using Facebook, is using Facebook to be "friends" with people you aren't even friends with in real life!. Now that I've graduated I have had an influx of Facebook activity from people I didn't even consider friends to begin with. It seems everyone and their mother wants to be facebook friends (what up moms of the world ::wink wink::). Former teachers, T.A.'s, lab partners, classmates, floormates, people I bumped into on the Circuit, someone I once peed next to at the bar, etc. have Facebooked me! What the fuck?! Leave me alone people! It's one thing if we were friends in real life and you wanted to add me as a Facebook friend so we could stalk each other's pictures and the like, but if we weren't there is no need to friend me simply because we graduated in the same year. If we didn't make a lasting enough impression on each other in gee I don't know, FOUR years, at least enough so that we'd have exchanged phone numbers or email addresses or something, what makes you think I want to be bullshit, fake friends now?

So, despite being sometimes useful, I'd say that when it comes to Facebook, the bad outweighs the good. It is eating through a generation like its one of the Langoliers. To all my twenty something year old readers out there, please, stop the madness! Otherwise the next time I see that I've been poked by some random Chatch Malone from the University of Nebraska that I've never met before, I am going to track him down and poke him back...right in the fucking eye.

-Adam