All's Fair in Facebook and War

"I once got unfriended from a war zone," Stefanie began.

I didn't know quite how to respond to this.

She used to have a close (albeit emotionally ambiguous) guy friend, until one day she confessed to him that she had been into him for a very long time. Bold move. And then, the worst kind of next-day awkwardness set in; the kind that only comes after an unrequited emotional admission to a close friend. She asked him if they were going to be okay. 'Don't worry about it,' he offered vaguely.

"But that was the last I heard," she told me. In the year that followed, they didn't communicate at all save for her sadly misguided attempt at sending birthday wishes and, more unfortunately, the requisite booze-fueled 'You're a giant asshole' email. Naturally, she accused him of lying to her that everything would be fine but then ditching her friendship as if jackassery was going out of style. He reassured her that he still wanted to be friends, but she remained unconvinced.

Then one day she was watching the news when she discovered that four American officers had been killed in Fallujah. Because he was in the military and she is, well, not a douchebag, she logged onto Facebook to make sure he was alive and well. That's when she discovered she had been unfriended. From a war zone.

She stormed to her phone to inform Connor of this gross affront.

"Was he sitting around in Iraq, weighing his options?" Connor mused. "Like, 'Take this hill in Fallujah... unfriend Stefanie. What should I do?'"

"This is why we're losing the war on terror," Stefanie raged. "Because our armed forces spend their time putzing around on Facebook!"

Indeed.


The few. The proud. Teh interwebz.