High School Reunions — Facebook's Newest Victim?

Hugh Pickens writes "For sheer social awkwardness, it's hard to beat finally seeing those people in person that you never liked in high school but are 'friends' with on Facebook. The NY Times reports that both attendance and the number of high school reunions held have dropped in recent years — thanks, some say, to Facebook and similar sites, nobody really has to lose touch anymore. 'There was a Facebook page for my 20-year college reunion, which took place this May,' says Deborah Dietzler. 'I looked at it a couple of times and it didn't seem like anyone I knew would be there, so I lost interest.' 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostalgia,' adds Michael Fox, who attended his 20-year high school reunion in November at a bar in Larchmont, NY to see the adult version of his classmates but was disappointed to find there was little he didn't already know because of Facebook. Others say the familiarity bred by social networking enhance the high school reunion experience. 'It's enticing. It's like a little preview, seeing everyone's life online,' says Holly Goshin. 'And whether you're happy that someone is not doing as well as you or you're happy that they look amazing, you get to see it all in person. Then you can move on with your life.'"

Comments

I doubt it

[Attila Dimedici]

I don't go to my high school reunions because the people who are for the most part people I am not interested in meeting again. I went to the first couple and none of the people I had any interest in seeing were there, so I stopped going. I'm not on Facebook (and I am pretty sure that neither are the classmates I would be interested in talking to again).

Re:I doubt it

[SpaghettiPattern]

I don't go to my high school reunions because the people who are for the most part people I am not interested in meeting again. I went to the first couple and none of the people I had any interest in seeing were there, so I stopped going. I'm not on Facebook (and I am pretty sure that neither are the classmates I would be interested in talking to again).

You're probably very right with your assumption. However, my experience is that people I didn't like have actually changed for the better. The more experienced you get in life the more human interfaces you can support. See it as if your internal algorithm improved so that not all exceptions bring you to a grinding hold. Instead you actually take pleasure in appreciating the awkwardness lying at the source of exceptions.

Having said that, I'd be very selective in going to reunions myself.

Re:I doubt it

[glueball]

I went to my 20th out of morbid curiosity. So did 250 of the 400 in my graduating class as well.

The best story was the two people who had not seen each other in 20 years drunkenly decided to "get nostalgic" in a closet while their respective spouses were still at the bar. Comedic interruption occurs, followed by divorces in the following weeks.

Facebook kept the story alive for all to follow and keep dignity at a minimum.

Thank you Facebook.

Re:I doubt it

[drinkypoo]

You're probably very right with your assumption. However, my experience is that people I didn't like have actually changed for the better.

My experience is that the people I didn't like who I thought have changed for the better haven't changed that much, I'm just more tolerant of their foibles. The people I really hated in high school peaked in high school and they're the same pieces of shit they always were. On the rare occasion I've run into them again they've said something to prove it, without exception.

If you were part of the in-crowd, then surely you can enjoy the popularity contest continuing at your reunion. Otherwise, high school was probably close to hell, and why return? It was a form of slavery and abuse to which I was subjected by legal threat and I'm glad to be shut of it.

Re:I doubt it

[duguk]

I don't go to my high school reunions because the people who are for the most part people I am not interested in meeting again. I went to the first couple and none of the people I had any interest in seeing were there, so I stopped going.

Probably like many /.ers, I can be very socially awkward and being able to have a few prompts to know what a reunion or social gathering may be like can be really helpful.

Facebook probably has meant I've been more able to enjoy being social when I might otherwise feel uncomfortable.

Re:I doubt it

[Attila Dimedici]

I discovered I was part of the in-crowd after I graduated from something one of the likable members of the in-crowd said. I went to the same college as several people I graduated with and at one point in college this guy told me something along the lines of "everyone liked you in high school". I had always thought I was unpopular because I hung out with the dweebs, dorks and nerds. Of course that was partly because I was unwilling to hurt their feelings by telling them I didn't want to hang out with them and partly because I often hung out in the computer lab.

Re:I doubt it

[sempir]

The more experienced you get in life the more human interfaces you can support. See it as if your internal algorithm improved so that not all exceptions bring you to a grinding hold. Instead you actually take pleasure in appreciating the awkwardness lying at the source of exceptions.

See...........there's another reason I don't go to them. If someone uttered that in the group I was in I'd sneak away before they figured out I didn't understand WTF they were talking about.

Re:I doubt it

[dskzero]

I highly doubt you realize how incredibly creepy that comment about algorithms was.

Re:I doubt it

[Andy Dodd]

It was interesting in that for my high school, a lot of people I knew started growing up near the end of senior year - people I hated for most of my high school career started becoming nice around the end of that time.

I was looking forward to my reunion to see how people had changed over the years - most of those whom I was friends with I have kept in touch with, but at my high school's 12-year reunion ("Better late than another 8" was the motto), a few close friends I hadn't seen in a long time were present, and a lot of people whom I didn't get along with that well back then had changed and became great people, and I've kept in touch since then.

Facebook was not in any way detrimental to our reunion. Apparently tradition is that the senior class president is supposed to do reunions, but ours wanted no part of it. As a result, when our 10th rolled around, people were asking "Hey, is there a reunion? What's the deal?" - The interesting thing was, people were asking on Facebook. The year of our 10th is when many people from my graduating class started joining Facebook and friending each other, even creating a group for our high school class.

Planning for our 11th (a year late) commenced on Facebook, although unfortunately the woman who had the lead role in that received a marriage proposal and had to change focus to wedding planning, the reunion for that year kind of fizzled.

The next year, another alumni decided that there WAS going to be a reunion for our 12th year, and she was going to do whatever it took to make it happen. Again - planning commenced on Facebook and thanks to her leadership we had an excellent 12-year reunion.

Without Facebook, that reunion never would have happened.

Re:I doubt it

[Migraineman]

High school was effectively prison. "Hey, let's get the D-Block gang back together 10 years after we're all released!" No thanks. My life peaked after I got away from that bureaucratic structured-behavior hell-hole. The friends I had from that time are still my friends, and this may be a shock to some, I still interact with them directly.

If a high school reunion is a good thing for you, by all means, participate. But don't bitch that I don't embrace it, nor complain that I'm ruining *your* reunion by not attending.

Re:I doubt it

[Rolgar]

Maybe it depends on the jerk.

I've had 2 bullies in school. One was when I was in 7th grade 22 years ago. He was a real snide SOB. Situation got to the point where he attacked me in the locker room, and sometime after that, he ended up going to school somewhere else. A couple of years ago, my sister was teaching school two hours away, and she was having parent-teacher conferences, and this guy is a parent of a kid at her school. Talking to each other, he admitted that he was a real jerk, and he wanted her to let me know that he knows he was in the wrong, and he hoped I could forgive him and know that he wouldn't do it if he could have the second chance.

I have a cousin that I never had a problem with, but has recently admitted that he was a bully to his younger siblings. Is he like that anymore? No.

People do change. I think their are three things that can change those people. One is correct parenting. Considering most individuals don't get a change in parents, this probably doesn't happen much.

The second has to do with getting along in the world that is different than school. In school, all children are equal in status, but different students find ways to be superior in different ways, academically, socially, athletically. Some kids resort to bullying. But when those individuals end up in the real world, and have to get jobs, some realize the error of their ways for different reasons.

For others, it's becoming a parent, and realizing that kids don't deserve to be bullied for things they can't control. I think this especially comes into play when there are multiple children in the family, and parents have to find a balance between the kids. Or a parent that was a bully has a kid that's more likely to be the victim and has to recognize and deal with what it means to be civilized.

Do some people stay the way they were when they were younger? Yep. Do others mature and become better people? Yep.

Concerning getting together with those people, I don't know that it provides any real benefit. It probably just feeds some desire for the past, but if I'm not going to make an effort to see these people again next month, is it really beneficial to go out of my way to get together? Probably not. But as a human, I recognize that history is significant, and that not only holds on a tribal level (for us as a country or family), but it also personally does for me. Given the opportunity, I would like to get together to talk to those people who I considered friends then.

Re:I doubt it

[operagost]

The Slashdot crowd makes the cast of Big Bang Theory look like a stylish clique.

'Social networking has robbed us of our nostalgia

[Neitokun]

So? It seems like every few days we get some article from somewhere that basically amounts to "things are different now". It's also bonus points when the thing that's changed was only something Baby Boomers really experienced, and they act like it was a universal, awesome thing that OH NO THE INTERNETS KILLING NOW.

Nostalgia is over-rated

[realsilly]

I don't believe in High School reunions nor to I subscribe to Facebook. If I liked a person from school, I'd still be in touch with them and if we lost touch, then it was time to move on. Facebook is the same thing. I hear about all these people "Friend" each other on Facebook only to "Unfriend" each other because either they realize they still don't like each other or there is nothing in common.

It's all a waste of time.

Stop looking into the past. Leave Facebook behind and go make new friends that know you for who you are today, not who you were yesterday.

Re:Nostalgia is over-rated

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, nostalgia is over-rated these days, but it didn't used to be this way. I remember when nostalgia was the ideal way to think about the past. Things were so much better back then.

Re:Nostalgia is over-rated

[Hatta]

Getting a second chance to bone that cute chick from history class is anything but a waste of time. Sure, you could have sex with anyone, but she's been in your spank bank for 20 years.

Re:Nostalgia is over-rated

[dwye]

This is rated +2 Informative?

Swoosh, moderators.

can't blame what preceded it...

[mortonda]

I stopped going to school reunions long before facebook existed. And by stopped, I mean never went.

No real surprise

[orthancstone]

This article seems like old hat at this point. When my wife brought up the idea of going to her 10 year reunion a few years back, I asked her what she was going to learn at said reunion that she doesn't already know from her Facebook news feed.

Re:No real surprise

[wdef]

... and a chance to shag those you were too frightened to talk to in your youth (only to find they've aged really really badly!).

Or I suppose you can at least gloat at just how revoltingly wrinkled, fat, stupid and ugly Mary Jane Hotty-Cheerleader - the girl that you blistered your palms and wrote bad poetry hopelessly lusting after at 16yo - turned out to be post-40. Or that she's alone, been divorced twice and struggles in a disgusting job with three horrific teenage brats on crack or in jail. You, who works out five times per week, is gloriously free of encumberments, and makes close to a 6-figure income, would never so much spit in her fatty wrinkled direction now. Ah! Schadenfreude may be a shallow and short lived pleasure but isn't it nice when geeks triumph over cheerleader/jock types with age.

Re:No real surprise

[vlm]

... and a chance to shag those you were too frightened to talk to in your youth (only to find they've aged really really badly!).

Or I suppose you can at least gloat at just how revoltingly wrinkled, fat, stupid and ugly Mary Jane Hotty-Cheerleader - the girl that you blistered your palms and wrote bad poetry hopelessly lusting after at 16yo - turned out to be post-40. Or that she's alone, been divorced twice and struggles in a disgusting job with three horrific teenage brats on crack or in jail. You, who works out five times per week, is gloriously free of encumberments, and makes close to a 6-figure income, would never so much spit in her fatty wrinkled direction now. Ah! Schadenfreude may be a shallow and short lived pleasure but isn't it nice when geeks triumph over cheerleader/jock types with age.

You don't have to wait until you're 40+... I had similar weird experiences as a mere lad of 25 or so. Good job, great pay, going to night school to get even more money, new car, great apartment... I had some weird meetings with former hotties and former football players at insurance offices, supermarket cashiers, read about their jail sentence in the paper, gas station clerks, groundskeepers... if you stay and live where you grew up, you tend to run into people a lot more often than if you jet across the country.

Re:No real surprise

[Just Some Guy]

When my wife brought up the idea of going to her 10 year reunion a few years back, I asked her what she was going to learn at said reunion that she doesn't already know from her Facebook news feed.

I went to my last reunion and had a great time hanging out in real life with friends I rarely get to see in person. Spending time with people you enjoy isn't about updating news items. It's about having fun conversations, laughing, and being connected to humanity. Facebook doesn't do that stuff.

Re:No real surprise

[Quirkz]

They don't have to be. I showed up, enjoyed talking to a few old friends I'd fallen out of touch with, talked to a few people who I didn't remember at all but it was still kind of interesting essentially meeting them for the first time, and spent most of the evening hanging out with three very close friends who I rarely get to see because they're 2000 miles away, and we all just used the reunion as an excuse to be in the same place at the same time.

Re: 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostal

[wdef]

Your criticisms of Facebook are all valid. But when you say that if people had something to tell you then they'd use email/text, the problem is that Facebook is replacing email and text as the primary written social communication media. People are just using these less and less to tell others about that party Saturday night or whatever. They say: "Oh what, you didn't see it on Facebook?". No, I didn't see it. I'm not on FB either and I pay a social price for it. That's plain wrong of course but that's how it is.

Incomplete story.

[Tharsman]

1) High school HOSTED reunions are becoming every day less because people are more likely to relocate these days, making it harder for schools to locate them and let them know about it.
2) In my experience, Facebook has actually increased high school reunions, without the need of the school inviting anyone back. Classmates just find eachother and plan their own reunions these days.
3) Reconnecting with classmates I dont ever want to see again was the reason I finally deleted my facebook account. There is a reason I never kept contact with them in the first place.
4) If your only reason to go to a school reunion is to be shocked at how the pretty girl is now fat and the sports guy is now a loser that just got off jail.... I think you belong in there because you didnt turn out too well either.

Re:Incomplete story.

[Lumpy]

WEll facebook has advantages.

Showing me that now 20 years later that hot girl I was lusting after is now a hag, and I dodged the bullet with the girlfriends I had, Two of them I though were nuts, were in fact, completely nuts. the other two turned into bull dykes later in life.

Re:Incomplete story.

[Andy Dodd]

I agree on number 2 - my high school class' 12-year reunion (long story, but let's just say that around when the 10th was due to happen was when most of my class were just discovering Facebook and friending each other) would not have happened without Facebook. The school itself had ZERO role in planning any reunion, and didn't even seem to make an attempt. One of our alumni planned the whole thing with help from other classmates on Facebook, held at a local golf course, and it was a resounding success.

Re:Incomplete story.

[Nyder]

WEll facebook has advantages.

Showing me that now 20 years later that hot girl I was lusting after is now a hag, and I dodged the bullet with the girlfriends I had, Two of them I though were nuts, were in fact, completely nuts. the other two turned into bull dykes later in life.

Dude, all chick are crazy, you just have to find one who's craziness doesn't set yours off.

I think they call that love, but i'm not sure.

Re:Incomplete story.

[TheRaven64]

The down side, presumably, being that those women turned out to have good taste in men?

Re: 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostal

[Neitokun]

>Facebook is redundant
One thing we agree on. My account there is basically vestigial at this point, used only to communicate with people who don't know me on Twitter or Google Plus and I don't feel like texting.
That said, the first half of your post has nothing to do with the last half. I get that reuniting with someone after a long way away is a nice feeling, but, in terms specifically of high school Reunions, is largely a fake feeling. It's not "Oh, here's my long lost aunt/niece/brother/friend I haven't seen in years, lets catch up", it's "Oh, here's a bunch of people who happened to be born around the same time as me, most of whom I don't care about." Maybe I'm just cynical for my age (I'm only a few years younger than you, born in '85), but most of the people I care about from high school I kept in touch with. The rest were noise to my life.

Really Michael Fox?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

So Facebook robbed us of our nostalgia?

Not, say, that time machine you keep riding around in?

I mean, why resort to renunions when you can actually go back and watch the actual high school prom in person?

Ummm how about the economy?

[MikeRT]

Gee, I don't know... could it be the fact that most people would find this an absolutely frivolous waste of money that would be better spent on a family vacation or basic expenses in a tight economy?

Self-fulfilling prophecy? A more general effect?

[Sockatume]

"I looked at it a couple of times and it didn't seem like anyone I knew would be there, so I lost interest."

Maybe that's the real issue? Everyone can check the RSVP list and see that nobody's really going, so nobody RSVPs, and so when people check the RSVP list it seems that nobody's going to go, and eventually everyone decides to just stay at home. In days of old you just gambled that there'd be enough people there for it to be worth your while. Maybe this is a more global effect of Facebook on event planning beyond reunions.

Pointless "tech" spin on a "social" trend.

[vlm]

Its a social trend, not a tech trend.

Seems the cultural goal is to hang out with the last group of people you went to school with.

Maybe 50 years ago, for the majority of americans, that was high school.

Currently, for the majority of americans, the last group of people they went to school with would have been dropping out of freshman year of college. And the "reunion-industrial complex" is not offering "freshman year reunions".

The other cultural/social trend is class mixing was cool 20 years ago when I was wasting time in high school. So my gym classes were just whatever random bunch of frosh thru seniors showed up that hour. We were required to take 4 years of English class and the electives were whatever random bunch of juniors or seniors showed up for sci fi class, etc. First and second year chem and physics (and bio, although I never took bio) were just whatever random bunch of sophmore to senior kids who showed up. Art elective was photography, again, whatever freshman thru senior kids felt like signing up... I think the only "all senior" class I ever took in my senior year, was calculus. Sooo one of my best school friends was my physics lab partner, and he was a year older than I am. I met a girlfriend a year younger than me, in english class in my sophomore year. The kids who graduated the year I did, who were a tiny subset of the kids I went to school with? By and large, don't much care. They only made up 1/3 to 1/4 the students in my classes so they only made up 1/3 to 1/4 of my school friends.

What about the kids I hung out with? Well back before the illegal alien invasion (this was decades ago) teenagers could get jobs. And it seems I worked with mostly kids from the school across town. Weirdly enough, after graduating I noticed I dated more girls from the "other school" than from my own school, because I hung out with them at work, leading to after work dates, you get the idea... I was entering the .mil and 4 local schools funneled into one recruitment center and we had monthly get together social club type activities. I was friends with three future marines, an air force wanna be, and a navy dude, none of which graduated with me at my school the same year.

At least WRT "twentieth year reunions" or so, there is just no social point anymore. Thats why they're going away.

Trying to spin a social trend into a "tech story" just looks stupid.

Facebook destroys everything that is not Facebook

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I didn't like high school the first time around, why would I want to go through that particular brand of hell again? That's why I don't use Facebook.

The word "victim" in the title is correct, though. Facebook destroys everything that is not Facebook. Small community web sites, forums, blogs, etc. and now things like high school reunions, local clubs and organizations, people going outside and looking up from their screens once in a while ... all of it suffering right now because all anyone wants to do anymore is fuck around on Facebook.

I do hope this changes sometime soon.

Who even gives a shit about high school anymore?

[elrous0]

Do most people even really "peak" in high school anymore anyway? Most people go onto college now, and that's where you *really* get to have fun and make friends. The only people who still view high school as their glory days are a handful of losers who end up working down to the plant telling everyone for the hundredth time about how they scored that winning touchdown in the big game that no one even remembers.

Reunions only work on TV

[petes_PoV]

There is a cliche film/tv reunion where where everyone is vital, pretty, socially able and remembers lots of amusing stories about the "best time of their life" at school or university.

In practice the interesting people are too busy being interesting to attend, the "hot" people you remember from when they were 17 or 18 have now gained 30kg (4+ stone) and only want to talk about their children, or their problems, or their scumbag ex-partner. Even worse, the events themselves are frequently thinly-veiled fundraisers for the school/university to support causes that didn't exist when you were there, and don't care about since you moved away - a long, long way away.

So if FB has managed to start killing off reonions, then at least it's performing one social good.

Re: 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostal

[shadowrat]

What exactly is the human experience? If everyone had to experience the same thing every generation would have to discover fire and how to kill animals that are stronger than us. It seems more like the human experience is to take what the previous generation did and learned for granted and come up with new stuff. Eschewing reunions for facebook is no less human than going to school rather than foraging for food.

Re: 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostal

[westlake]

It's also bonus points when the thing that's changed was only something Baby Boomers really experienced

The geek has no sense of time

and, arguably, no social instincts whatever.

But there are things in this world best experienced off-line.

We have scrapbooks and photographs of family reunions and other gatherings that reach back deep into the nineteeth century

I am quite certain that with a bit of effort we could find some many earlier examples.

Re: 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostal

[dwye]

Yeah, but the spectacle of what we call a High School/College reunion now is largely a product of the Boomers.

Don't tell that to my parents. They were their HS class president and secretary, and organized their 5th reunion, then skipped it until their 50th. Now, it is every year (mind you, at this point it is just a large table at a restaurant, but...).

Baby boomers pioneered nothing but snorting coke at reunions, rather than drinking rum and coke, the use of non-medical marijuana, and the Beatles and Stones playing rather than Perry Como or Frank Sinatra (or Artie Shaw and Glen Miller, in parents' case).

Awkward reunions replaced by awkward friend reques

[ISurfTooMuch]

The big thing I've noticed is that, once one person from high school finds you on Facebook, the rest will soon follow. I've had practically zero contact with the folks I went to high school with in the past 23 years after graduation, and I'm inclined to keep it that way. But then someone found me and friended me, and I foolishly accepted, probably because that person was someone I didn't despise. Then more showed up...and more...and more. Then I was getting friend requests from people who I really didn't like too much. Those are sitting out there in friend request limbo, where I plan on leaving them until the day I finally quit Facebook, which, given this whole Timeline thing, may be coming soon.

Not at all true

[bananaquackmoo]

I have to say I disagree with the story 100%. In fact if not for Facebook our high school reunion would not have happened at all. Former students took it upon themselves to organize it via Facebook, and now I am more connected with people than I would have been without Facebook.

I double-doubt it

[OhHellWithIt]

My class (1976) has never held a reunion -- something to do with the combination of an unusually high proportion of slackers and Southern racial politics -- but what I see of most of my "friends" on Facebook tells me that we're best off being Facebook "friends" and that my hometown is a great place to be from.