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Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009

Mike Tharp: Friendship clicks on MyFace

Trogluddite.

That's the word I invented a few years back to describe me and folks like me who are flummoxed by technology. It combines "troglodyte," which means a prehistoric cave dweller, with "Luddite," one who opposes technological change, named after a 19th century Englishman who did just that.

In other words, folks who haven't yet learned to text on their cell phones. Folks who can't tell HDTV from 3-D. Folks who prefer video tapes to CDs or DVDs because you can stop, rewind and fast-forward easier.

Folks, in short, who are out of it.

The ones whose old VCR timer blinked 0:00 forever.

So it was with some unease that I let my son Nao -- who only holds a degree in digital media arts from Cal State Dominguez Hills and makes videos of his own music productions -- sign me up for Facebook.

I was in Baghdad this summer. He wanted me to be able to better see his videos and photographs of national parks than through simple e-mail. So I signed up.

My cousin Angela in Austin had made me a MySpace page in late 2007. It looked super sharp, with a 10-year-old fancy photo of me she took, Elvis singing "Blue Christmas" as theme music and other cool bells and whistles. I even listed my favorite movies and songs.

Since then I think I've looked at it twice.

Tweeter? Sounds wussy to me. Grunter, maybe.

But I went ahead and took the leap into Facebook. (I've sometimes confused the two and called them MyFace.)

Dang! Is it a social networking world, or what?

I still don't know how to post a photo of myself on it. And I've never asked someone to be my friend -- don't know how.

But the first week, maybe 20 people asked me to be their "friend." I knew them all, so I dutifully clicked "Accept" and wrote a short message.

One of the most meaningful came from Andy Gallegos, a kid I'd coached in basketball at L.A.'s San Pedro High School for three years in the late '90s. Andy wrote that he'd gone on to become a Navy SEAL, got married, had a daughter.

At the end of his message he wrote, "I never told you this before, but what you taught us about having 'a killer instinct' in basketball made a lasting impression on me. Thank you for teaching me that."

The tide became a torrent.

Dozens of student journalists I'd taught for seven years at Cal State Fullerton asked me to their friend. "Accept," and a note with a link to the Sun-Star Web site.

An ex-wife. Truth be told, we communicate via ordinary e-mail several times a year. "Accept." How could I not?

Staffers from the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, the weekly Hong Kong-based Bible, Koran, Talmud and Tibetan Book of the Dead for all issues Asian since it was founded in 1946. (I was its Tokyo bureau chief for three years.)

Trogluddite.

I couldn't figure out how to type in the right commands or hit the keys to nestle into the group's niche on Facebook. FEER's Lily Kan and Charles Smith, my successor in Tokyo, have promised help.

The wife of the head coach at San Pedro High, Jennifer Ezpeleta, reached out and touched me with a nickname only she, her husband Coach Eldridge and I know. Now we're swapping messages.

In one sense I wonder whyinhell we can't just write one another e-mails. Dozens of family and friends reach me that way every day.

But even I realize that the Facebook software -- which I don't pretend to understand -- bridges technosynapses like the old Disney short about what happens when you throw one ping-pong ball into a room filled with mousetraps, each holding its own ping-pong ball. Snap-snap-snap-snap times several hundred ...

Equals my prom date from our senior year in high school. Judi had written a nice comment on a blog I posted from Baghdad; I've replied to everybody who has ever commented -- but she didn't leave an e-mail address. I hadn't seen her since our 20th reunion.

So end of generational journey, right? Wrong. This week Jim Macfee, another guy in our class, pulled one of those special Facebook moves that says, in effect, hey, here's another person you might want to be friends with on Facebook. I clicked on it, wrote Judi a note thanking her for her generous comment about the blog, logged off and ...

This week we conducted a 90-minute phone catch-up conversation. Her Facebook photo, now a blonde (I remember her hair as dark as a nun's habit as we slow-danced a discreetly Catholic distance apart at the prom), made the conversation flow like wind rippling over water.

There've been a handful of contacts I didn't "accept." Most I don't know or don't remember. One I did and had zero interest in letting him know zilch about me.

Reckon that's one of the sales points of these social networks. You don't want to be friends? No sweat. Click "Ignore" or just ignore 'em. Your call.

The torrent has become a trickle now. A guy I went through grade school and high school with and hadn't seen since we graduated. Good to hear from him. But what do you say after "Accept"? I try to be polite.

But I also know that, with exceptions like my high school prom date, the FEER crowd, former student journalists and such, there ain't much else to say.

Good ol' e-mail has served as a marvelous technology to keep in touch, often close touch, with people from our past and present.

Which brings us to Russell Daggatt and Kevin Foley. At key points in my life -- in Tokyo, San Francisco, L.A., Seattle -- we were close friends. Spent a lot of time trying to stay out of trouble. Confided in each other. Helped and got help back. Both were distance runners. We ran a lot together.

Somehow, though, the years have rushed past ever faster as I near the end of my own calendar. And we lost track of one another.

So thanks to the 180 or so of you who have asked to become my friend since July. Facebook would indeed work magic if somehow it could find those two lost buddies -- Russell and Kevin.

Guys -- I "accept."

Just look for the trogluddite on MyFace.

Executive Editor Mike Tharp can be reached at mtharp@mercedsun-star.com or (209) 385-2456.