High School Reunions — Facebook's Newest Victim? 168
Hugh Pickens writes "For sheer social awkwardness, it's hard to beat finally seeing those people in person that you never liked in high school but are 'friends' with on Facebook. The NY Times reports that both attendance and the number of high school reunions held have dropped in recent years — thanks, some say, to Facebook and similar sites, nobody really has to lose touch anymore. 'There was a Facebook page for my 20-year college reunion, which took place this May,' says Deborah Dietzler. 'I looked at it a couple of times and it didn't seem like anyone I knew would be there, so I lost interest.' 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostalgia,' adds Michael Fox, who attended his 20-year high school reunion in November at a bar in Larchmont, NY to see the adult version of his classmates but was disappointed to find there was little he didn't already know because of Facebook. Others say the familiarity bred by social networking enhance the high school reunion experience.
'It's enticing. It's like a little preview, seeing everyone's life online,'
says Holly Goshin. 'And whether you're happy that someone is not doing as well as you or you're happy that they look amazing, you get to see it all in person. Then you can move on with your life.'"
Re:I doubt it (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't go to my high school reunions because the people who are for the most part people I am not interested in meeting again. I went to the first couple and none of the people I had any interest in seeing were there, so I stopped going. I'm not on Facebook (and I am pretty sure that neither are the classmates I would be interested in talking to again).
You're probably very right with your assumption. However, my experience is that people I didn't like have actually changed for the better. The more experienced you get in life the more human interfaces you can support. See it as if your internal algorithm improved so that not all exceptions bring you to a grinding hold. Instead you actually take pleasure in appreciating the awkwardness lying at the source of exceptions.
Having said that, I'd be very selective in going to reunions myself.
Incomplete story. (Score:5, Interesting)
1) High school HOSTED reunions are becoming every day less because people are more likely to relocate these days, making it harder for schools to locate them and let them know about it.
2) In my experience, Facebook has actually increased high school reunions, without the need of the school inviting anyone back. Classmates just find eachother and plan their own reunions these days.
3) Reconnecting with classmates I dont ever want to see again was the reason I finally deleted my facebook account. There is a reason I never kept contact with them in the first place.
4) If your only reason to go to a school reunion is to be shocked at how the pretty girl is now fat and the sports guy is now a loser that just got off jail.... I think you belong in there because you didnt turn out too well either.
Self-fulfilling prophecy? A more general effect? (Score:5, Interesting)
"I looked at it a couple of times and it didn't seem like anyone I knew would be there, so I lost interest."
Maybe that's the real issue? Everyone can check the RSVP list and see that nobody's really going, so nobody RSVPs, and so when people check the RSVP list it seems that nobody's going to go, and eventually everyone decides to just stay at home. In days of old you just gambled that there'd be enough people there for it to be worth your while. Maybe this is a more global effect of Facebook on event planning beyond reunions.
Pointless "tech" spin on a "social" trend. (Score:5, Interesting)
Its a social trend, not a tech trend.
Seems the cultural goal is to hang out with the last group of people you went to school with.
Maybe 50 years ago, for the majority of americans, that was high school.
Currently, for the majority of americans, the last group of people they went to school with would have been dropping out of freshman year of college. And the "reunion-industrial complex" is not offering "freshman year reunions".
The other cultural/social trend is class mixing was cool 20 years ago when I was wasting time in high school. So my gym classes were just whatever random bunch of frosh thru seniors showed up that hour. We were required to take 4 years of English class and the electives were whatever random bunch of juniors or seniors showed up for sci fi class, etc. First and second year chem and physics (and bio, although I never took bio) were just whatever random bunch of sophmore to senior kids who showed up. Art elective was photography, again, whatever freshman thru senior kids felt like signing up... I think the only "all senior" class I ever took in my senior year, was calculus. Sooo one of my best school friends was my physics lab partner, and he was a year older than I am. I met a girlfriend a year younger than me, in english class in my sophomore year. The kids who graduated the year I did, who were a tiny subset of the kids I went to school with? By and large, don't much care. They only made up 1/3 to 1/4 the students in my classes so they only made up 1/3 to 1/4 of my school friends.
What about the kids I hung out with? Well back before the illegal alien invasion (this was decades ago) teenagers could get jobs. And it seems I worked with mostly kids from the school across town. Weirdly enough, after graduating I noticed I dated more girls from the "other school" than from my own school, because I hung out with them at work, leading to after work dates, you get the idea... I was entering the .mil and 4 local schools funneled into one recruitment center and we had monthly get together social club type activities. I was friends with three future marines, an air force wanna be, and a navy dude, none of which graduated with me at my school the same year.
At least WRT "twentieth year reunions" or so, there is just no social point anymore. Thats why they're going away.
Trying to spin a social trend into a "tech story" just looks stupid.
Facebook destroys everything that is not Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
The word "victim" in the title is correct, though. Facebook destroys everything that is not Facebook. Small community web sites, forums, blogs, etc. and now things like high school reunions, local clubs and organizations, people going outside and looking up from their screens once in a while
I do hope this changes sometime soon.
Re:I doubt it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostal (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, but the spectacle of what we call a High School/College reunion now is largely a product of the Boomers.
Don't tell that to my parents. They were their HS class president and secretary, and organized their 5th reunion, then skipped it until their 50th. Now, it is every year (mind you, at this point it is just a large table at a restaurant, but...).
Baby boomers pioneered nothing but snorting coke at reunions, rather than drinking rum and coke, the use of non-medical marijuana, and the Beatles and Stones playing rather than Perry Como or Frank Sinatra (or Artie Shaw and Glen Miller, in parents' case).
Re:I doubt it (Score:4, Interesting)
It was interesting in that for my high school, a lot of people I knew started growing up near the end of senior year - people I hated for most of my high school career started becoming nice around the end of that time.
I was looking forward to my reunion to see how people had changed over the years - most of those whom I was friends with I have kept in touch with, but at my high school's 12-year reunion ("Better late than another 8" was the motto), a few close friends I hadn't seen in a long time were present, and a lot of people whom I didn't get along with that well back then had changed and became great people, and I've kept in touch since then.
Facebook was not in any way detrimental to our reunion. Apparently tradition is that the senior class president is supposed to do reunions, but ours wanted no part of it. As a result, when our 10th rolled around, people were asking "Hey, is there a reunion? What's the deal?" - The interesting thing was, people were asking on Facebook. The year of our 10th is when many people from my graduating class started joining Facebook and friending each other, even creating a group for our high school class.
Planning for our 11th (a year late) commenced on Facebook, although unfortunately the woman who had the lead role in that received a marriage proposal and had to change focus to wedding planning, the reunion for that year kind of fizzled.
The next year, another alumni decided that there WAS going to be a reunion for our 12th year, and she was going to do whatever it took to make it happen. Again - planning commenced on Facebook and thanks to her leadership we had an excellent 12-year reunion.
Without Facebook, that reunion never would have happened.
Re:Incomplete story. (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree on number 2 - my high school class' 12-year reunion (long story, but let's just say that around when the 10th was due to happen was when most of my class were just discovering Facebook and friending each other) would not have happened without Facebook. The school itself had ZERO role in planning any reunion, and didn't even seem to make an attempt. One of our alumni planned the whole thing with help from other classmates on Facebook, held at a local golf course, and it was a resounding success.
Re:I doubt it (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it depends on the jerk.
I've had 2 bullies in school. One was when I was in 7th grade 22 years ago. He was a real snide SOB. Situation got to the point where he attacked me in the locker room, and sometime after that, he ended up going to school somewhere else. A couple of years ago, my sister was teaching school two hours away, and she was having parent-teacher conferences, and this guy is a parent of a kid at her school. Talking to each other, he admitted that he was a real jerk, and he wanted her to let me know that he knows he was in the wrong, and he hoped I could forgive him and know that he wouldn't do it if he could have the second chance.
I have a cousin that I never had a problem with, but has recently admitted that he was a bully to his younger siblings. Is he like that anymore? No.
People do change. I think their are three things that can change those people. One is correct parenting. Considering most individuals don't get a change in parents, this probably doesn't happen much.
The second has to do with getting along in the world that is different than school. In school, all children are equal in status, but different students find ways to be superior in different ways, academically, socially, athletically. Some kids resort to bullying. But when those individuals end up in the real world, and have to get jobs, some realize the error of their ways for different reasons.
For others, it's becoming a parent, and realizing that kids don't deserve to be bullied for things they can't control. I think this especially comes into play when there are multiple children in the family, and parents have to find a balance between the kids. Or a parent that was a bully has a kid that's more likely to be the victim and has to recognize and deal with what it means to be civilized.
Do some people stay the way they were when they were younger? Yep. Do others mature and become better people? Yep.
Concerning getting together with those people, I don't know that it provides any real benefit. It probably just feeds some desire for the past, but if I'm not going to make an effort to see these people again next month, is it really beneficial to go out of my way to get together? Probably not. But as a human, I recognize that history is significant, and that not only holds on a tribal level (for us as a country or family), but it also personally does for me. Given the opportunity, I would like to get together to talk to those people who I considered friends then.