Yesterday, in a moment of thoughtless procrastination, I started trawling through the dark ages of my Facebook account. Self absorbed? Arrogant? Yeah, probably.
In actual fact I went searching for a picture of my friend and I, taken at her birthday about five years ago. It was one of those true shockers and I wanted to post it to her wall to celebrate another year. Thats’s what true friends do. I knew it was back there somewhere, so I dove deep.
It was then that I realised what I had suspected for a long time. I owe my Facebook friends an enormous apology. All those years ago when one of us clicked ‘accept’ on a friend request I provided a much different kind of newsfeed to fellow scrollers than the one I do now.
Primarily my Facebook life was filled with mundane complains about my job (not this one BTW), scandalous photos of drunken adventures and frequent invites to parties or events. ‘Jacqui Porter is going to some piss up in a shed.’ Yes, thanks!
Yeah, I’d wanna be friends with old Facebook me. I looked fun! (As an aside, we all know that real life is very different to the actual state of someone’s day to day but don’t let the reality of your weekend get in the way of a good status update, hey?)
Like a lot of early 20-somethings, my Facebook was mildly amusing with funny anecdotes, photos with big groups of people and videos of people doing dumb sh*t.
Then the children came along.
The pre cursor was the wedding album. It should have indicated to my friends that it was about to go downhill, my hens night album should have given it away.
Once the babies came, I morphed into a baby spammer. I was the first of my social group to get married and reproduce, so they were all so very far removed from the new ‘mum life’ I was living. Of course I knew at the time that I was posting a disturbingly significant number of photos of my first born but like a addict, I couldn’t stop.
I still can’t.
My friends were kind enough to keep on the ‘like’ button even when the 12 photos of ‘baby’s first solids’ were pretty much identical. (Couldn’t they see he was doing a half smile in one and a grumpy face in another!?)
Since then it’s pretty much hit the skids. Not my life, I mean, I’m really happy. I’m talking about my Facebook profile.
No longer can you look through photos of a Saturday pub crawl or fancy dress party but if you like, you can peruse my kid’s soccer pics. For those extra keen, my son drew a picture of a penguin that kind of looked like an actual penguin. That ones available on by Facebook and Instagram.
The kid spam is significant. Like I said, I know.
Nowadays I ‘like’ things that I would imagine my mother also finding amusing and my ‘saved’ folder is filled with lunchbox ideas and DIY rainy day activities. There’s not a stereosonic crowd pic in sight and I actually had to google what a 'bae' was to understand other people's memes.
So this is a public apology to all those on my list who have had to put up with a very different person you may have friends requested or accepted all those years ago. Perhaps it’s too awkward to de-friend me, maybe I’m just blocked but either way, thanks. Of course I know that you don’t care about my kid’s easter hat parade like I do.
Thanks for putting up with me posting parenting advice when I’m sure you’d much rather scroll through and see Australia Day drunken slip and slides. Thanks for not defending me when I accidentally posted a picture of my son’s rash publicly instead of to a private mummy group.
You’re all awesome and I promise to ‘like’ endless photos of your kids doing the same thing when they come along.
Have you been through a similar experience since becoming a parent?