Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Going to extremes for school reunions – CNN.com.

I have to agree with one of the commenters that to at least some degree, high school reunions are redundant nowadays, since Facebook and other sites keep us connected in ways that weren’t possible in earlier days.

However, I think reunions will keep going strong for a few reasons (not all of them listed below, of course). Admittedly these are cynical reasons for the high school reunion to survive… but honestly, how many people really go to their high school reunions because they LOVED high school? Curiosity, I think, is what draws most people. So here goes:

1) Obviously, not everybody is on Facebook, and sometimes the missing folks are the people you most want to see again.

2) Facebook is the primer for the reunion, not its substitute! (You do with this one what you will.)

3) Poking people and “Liking” their status updates is not the same as really talking to people, catching up, and putting yourself back into the social structures that made your high school your high school, for better or for worse. For people seeking to “undo” what they lived through in high school, the reunion itself is necessary. And for people seeking to “relive” their glory days of high school, where they reigned supreme as Evil Bitchmonster of Death, sometimes the reunion is necessary to take them down a notch. And of course some things never change – but how will you know until you get there?

4) While becoming the Great American Pastime, Facebook-stalking people you aren’t really friends with on or off Facebook does not a reunion make.

5) Finally, people present a polished and carefully constructed image of themselves online – sometimes so carefully it cannot be reconstructed off the computer screen. Don’t you want to see what that annoying girl with the glamour shot profile pic REALLY looks like today?

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