Is Facebook killing high school reunions? Who cares! I mean, it could be:
“People have told me that now that they are on Facebook, they don’t feel the need to go to the reunion,” Sullivan said.
While Facebook and other social networks have been a godsend in helping reunion organizers [track] down classmates who have strayed over the years, they also cut the other way.
All the evidence in the article is anecdotal, so here’s some more anecdotes for the mill: I heard that something like a half-dozen people showed up at my 10-year high school reunion (out of a class of 300) but I attributed that low number to the fact that most of my classmates still lived in southern Maine and could keep track of each other without a reunion. It’s possible that the internet had something to do with it, I guess. See? The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming!
I think this is pretty accurate. My reunion this year had a pretty weak turnout as well. I flew across the country for it, but some of my friends who still lived in town didn’t even come. We had maybe 25 out of 300. Kinda disappointing.
I went to my high school reunion last summer and facebook made it so boring. I saw all of these people for the first time in years and was like “so…you had a baby.” Or “I hear you hate Mondays.” Plus I already knew who had gotten fat so there really just wasn’t much of a point.
I’d rather go to a HS reunion than give up my privacy to FB. Guess it cuts all sorts of ways.
This is most of the reason I stay far away from the Facebooks — because all those people I never had any interest in keeping up with have made it into one long, neverending high school reunion. Ugh.
I really hated high school…why would I want to go back to there?
I hated HS, but really liked many of my classmates.
It was nice to see them at the reunion, but I did have to throw back a couple drinks beforehand.
(and through-out)
Strange how the childhood insecurities you think you’ve long gotten over resurface in your mind though at times.
I love it!
I occasionally feel the urge to see large groups of people I went to high school with, but not that often. I honestly find the idea of going often – and the people that never grew past HS – rather repulsive.
But I’ve joined various hometown/special interest FB groups that have satisfied/exhausted any curiosity I’ve felt about any of my classmates (other than the one’s I’ve chosen to remain close to). It’s nice to have that sense of detachment that social media allows. It’s like tapping the glass of an ant farm.
For me, it’s more slightly less horrible thing replaces horrible thing.
facebook and high school are both for kids. Get lives, adults
Grow up grownman.
If there is much to this thing about FB replacing reunions, then I would bet much of it is generational too. And thus changing.
I think it’s more generational shift than facebook. I mean in the 60’s and 70’s high school was ‘A Big Deal’. Prom was ‘The Most Important Night of Our Lives’. Apparantly. High school in the 90’s? ‘Fuck That Shit’. I really think people wouldn’t be going now regardless of facebook.
I’ve moved on from HS and am not one to look back on it much. I use a different name on social media to keep the pre-20s dross off my friends list.
FB made me realize that I never want to see the majority of my classmates again. It’s also painfully evident that most of them stopped learning freshman year.
I was totally going to fly to Miami and pay $100+ to hang out with a bunch of people I hated at a horrible South Beach nightclub.