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rfmcdonaldFrom The Canadian Press:
Zachary McDonald from the Suburban Newspapers network has a another personal tajke on the issue of Facebook and reunions that seems to reinforce the arguments of Naro and Farmer. The Canadian Press article also suggest, however, that at least as many people are interested in using online social networks to plan reunions as not.
Ten years after graduating from Taylor High School in Katy, Texas, Tina Lee Naro learned some surprising things about her former classmates.
One committed atheist became a Mormon. A tightly wound "business school" type became a laid-back bartender at a Montana ski resort. And a formerly hirsute friend is now completely bald.
Naro, now a consultant in New York City, learned all these things not in person, but on the social networking site Facebook - enough that she now plans to skip her 10-year reunion this September.
"I already had all those reunion moments: 'Really? You're gay? You're married? You joined the military?"' she said. "Actually going back to Katy holds a lot less appeal now."
Sites like Facebook and MySpace are now competition for the class reunion - that time-honoured tradition of dressing to kill, choking down rubbery chicken and gossiping about old classmates. Many far-flung graduates say the ease of exchanging pictures and memories online makes it hard to justify expensive trips home.
The idea resonated so deeply with Chris Farmer of Vancouver that he created a Facebook group entitled "Facebook Has Eliminated The Need For A High School Reunion."
When he signed up for Facebook, Farmer was flooded with messages from high-school classmates: jocks, nerds, popular kids, even people he was pretty sure he'd never spoken to before.
"It was overwhelming, this feeling of running into everyone I'd ever known," he said.
Farmer quickly sorted out what he calls "the good stuff" - which former party-girl now teaches Sunday school, who gained or lost 200 pounds, which high-school sweethearts broke up spectacularly and which went on to get married and have kids. But after reconnecting, "seeing people in real life seemed a little pointless," Farmer said.
Zachary McDonald from the Suburban Newspapers network has a another personal tajke on the issue of Facebook and reunions that seems to reinforce the arguments of Naro and Farmer. The Canadian Press article also suggest, however, that at least as many people are interested in using online social networks to plan reunions as not.
