On Facebook, actions speak louder than words

While Facebook often annoys me, sometimes it just baffles me.

As anyone on the site knows, you can download a seemingly endless assortment of "Superpoke" applications that provide inane interaction with other members. Just for fun, you can gift a friend with an (imaginary) imitation designer bag, plant a flower in someone's virtual garden, or throw a sheep at anyone and everyone you wish.

Shortly after I first started on Facebook, I made a conscious decision to blackball all of these "pokes". You have to download each application in order to accept or return the gifts/sheep/roundhouse kicks, and it would take too long and be too annoying to bother with each one. More than that, with each "gift" comes grief and guilt, should you not wish to return that tennis serve or blow a kiss back to the annoying girl who sent it. Every "poke" becomes an exercise in etiquette, as we all secretly wonder if a Fuzzy Navel is an appropriate exchange for that Makers on the rocks, or if the initiator will notice (and take to heart) if we ignore the action entirely. If I avoid every application across the board, though, I'll never be accused of playing favorites or have to explain why I helped build a playground but didn't further the Orangemen wave.

I don't get too many Superpokes anymore, but every once in a while, one will come through. Today, someone apparently downloaded the "Snowball fight" application, because I got a - are you ready for it? I got a Pee Snowball sent to me.

A Pee Snowball.

I assume that's what I think it is? A snowball with pee on it? (In it?) Not only is that terribly gross, but how random! I can't even see the humor in it - I am just so baffled that someone would even think of creating that. What puzzles me even more is that the girl who sent it to me is someone I have not even talked to since about the first grade. Oh, we went to high school together, but we were in different groups and she was always very quiet and shy. I can't imagine why she would want to break the ice, all these years later, with this.

Technically, semantically, it wasn't even sent to me - it was thrown at me, which has the implication of being a little bit hostile. Like somebody would actually choose to wet their hands with pee, if it meant seeing a snowball hit me! I'm sure it wasn't malicious, of course, and that she either meant to send it to someone else or meant to send me something much more... um... normal, but this is yet another way Facebook has managed to make me feel bad about my neck.