What is the point of high school reunions in the age of Facebook?

...the lucky 0.01% of the population who had the looks and money of the 90210 kids when they were in high school. Jealous still? Yeah!

       Since joining Facebook in late 2008, I have accumulated the sum total of 164 "friends," if such a term can be utilized even in the loosest sense. Two of these friends are people I have never met. Several are individuals I scarcely knew in my younger days. Only a handful are those individuals with whom I have meaningful, regular interaction. Yet Facebook is a phenomenon that shows no signs of falling into obscurity. The reconnections, outpouring of intimate details plus the random musings are all part of what has sustained its phenomenal growth in its short lifespan.

       This morning I logged onto the site only to discover that my high school will be hosting a twenty-year reunion in March. I have never attended a high school reunion as my memories of those four years are better dealt with through willed amnesia and physical distance. What I find puzzling is that such an event still has prominence even in the age of Facebook, an era in which the high school reunion has become an everyday event, thanks to technology.

       Everyday life now functions as a reunion of sorts thanks to Mark Zuckerberg's creation. No longer are we to idle away time wondering whatever became of our classmates as their routines are now intermingled with our own. Facebook gives a regular glimpse into the daily lives of those who once captivated us, induced scorn, provoked pity and elicited admiration.

       My own story is probably a cliché: from the time I started high school until I graduated, I was 6'1" (1,85 cm.) and weighed a mere 120 lbs. As a gaunt, unathletic, anxiety-ridden and unfocused adolescent, my time was not a particularly happy one. In fact, it probably serves as a required pedigree for any writer.

        Returning to the theme of the high school reunion, it appears that such a formality is redundant in our era of instant connections. Our daily lives are intertwined with others who knew us through what was either that most awkward of phases, or the high point of our existence: adolescence. What is to be gained from the physical, rather than virtual encounter we experience each day? Probably not a lot.

       If men lead lives of quiet desperation, Facebook has offered a channel whereby that desperation can be amplified for an audience. Rarely a day goes by when one is not taken aback by an update narrating the lovelessness, or dissolution, of a marriage, the ingratitude of children, the stifling nature of a job, the unlikelihood of youthful ambitions being realized, random -and often inane-musings on life and frustration with the very technology that has brought us together. Facebook offers this and more. It offers one the chance to see the Brandons and Dylans of bygone days now devolved into Homer Simpsons, complete with beer guts and combovers. It also offers the chance to see a delicate beauty now coarsened by the hardships of life or an underachiever marvel that he has sustained himself above the poverty level. In addition, you can experience your ideological opposite rant on breathlessly about matters on which he is hopelessly uninformed. These and other factors neither detract nor add to the human experience overall.

         Just why the high school reunion persists as an institution I will never understand. For some, the four years of high school were the apogee of existence. To me, unless you could pass for five years older than you were, had parents who bought you your own apartment and funded your daily life with a trust, and you were the owner of a foolproof fake ID and a Porsche, I see little value in remembering those days gone by. Yet remember is what we do. Much of this is based in a morbid quest to validate onself against the standards imposed on oneself by oneself, not by those with whom you graduated. In reality, the captain of the football team probably cares little about what you have done with your life. You have just deluded yourself into believing that there exists a still-united clique whose affirmation you must attain even in adulthood. As a result comes the anxiety as you prep yourself for that reunion. Save yourself the bother. Enjoy instead the knowledge that today brings you no curfews, no acne, that alcohol is attainable with ease and that your destiny is largely your own, something that cannot be said about one's adolescence. The money you save by not flying to your reunion could be spent on a ticket to the unknown, another continent where new memories wait to be created. As for me, if given the choice between flying to New York for a reunion or spending it on a trip to Bhutan, I will opt for the latter. I find myself far more enriched when creating new experiences rather than re-living that which is thankfully over.

Insanity: you not only carry out an atrocity on your fellow human beings, but you plan it when you have only *one month* left in the damned place!