Losing Life's Randomness

I've previously written about my love of the commercials produced at the public access stations for local businesses. You know the ones: they show up after a half-second of a national ad and the sudden drop in quality is often so jarring it's the most memorable thing about the commercial. They are usually for some local business where the owner of the company is the star, trying to show off acting chops that he really doesn't have and half the time the audio doesn't even sync up correctly. Still, it is because they are so ghetto that I love everything about them - the stunted acting, the horrible "special" effects and jilted editing are so bad they're good. However, there is another reason I love them: occasionally, I know some of these people.

The other night I was watching "SportsCenter" when an ad came on for a local sporting goods store. While I was mostly not paying attention due to the fact that I don't really need cleats for anything, I did catch a glimpse of a face I thought looked familiar. Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to catch it the first time around, but the good news for me is the only thing these terrible, locally-produced commercials have in common with the big-budget national ads is that they too run all... the... time. I probably had to wait just one or two commercials break before the ad popped back up on my TV.

Now I was studying the screen as if I would be tested on it later. Turns out I wasn't just seeing things. There, trying his best to act as though he was really selling a baseball bat to some kid, was a guy I went to school with. I can only guess that he either works in this sporting goods store or at the local production company and they needed someone to act like an employee. Either way, good for him. And even though this guy hadn't entered my mind in years, but it was kind of fun to randomly see what he is now up to.

It then occurred to me that this an entire generation of kids have no idea what this feeling of randomness is like. Because of Facebook they just know what is going on in everyone's lives, even the people they don't particularly like. Every conversation with people on Facebook about this kind of stuff goes like this:

Me: Oh, you're never going to guess who I saw today.
Person who is on Facebook: Really? Who?
Me: Rich. And you're never going to guess what he's up to!
PWIOF: Married, two kids, working at a tech office in Franklin.
Me: Um, yeah. How did you know that?
PWIOF: We're Facebook friends. He updates all the time.
Me: But you never even liked Rich.
PWIOF: Like that matters on Facebook.

Thinking about it a little further, it kind of bummed me out. You see, I like random things in life. I've always believed that if someone was meant to be part of your life, then the world would conspire to make them re-appear. I'm not going so far as to say it would be destiny or fate, because I don't really believe in those things, I just think it's one of the quirks of life. I always liked that sense of not knowing who could come around the corner any minute and then being able to catch up with them after years of lost communication. Now most people don't get to experience the feeling that comes with the randomness of life because they just Google a person, become Facebook Friends and know everything there is to know without having to speak to anyone. It comes so easy that it's not fun. That's too bad.

So, really, the moral of this post is simple: Screw Facebook.