FACEBOOK: REUNION KILLER.
On Facebook, I can gawk at photos of my kindergarten best friend's adorable twin kids and my high school fling's current girlfriend. I learned that the girl who lived up the block is now an investment banker, and a few old friends are marrying this summer. So the question Adam Kushner poses at Newsweek is apt: Now that we can track a lifetime worth of acquaintances online, why should we attend costly college and high school reunions?
Historically, reunions have used voyeurism as a lure. Who lives where, who got hitched, who got fat—you had to show up to find out. But now the answers are all online. "Facebook has turned the idea of college reunions from an expensive necessity to just expensive," says Kevin Pang, who skipped his five-year reunion at the University of Southern California last week.That's bad news for colleges: reunions are the most reliable fund-raising tool in their arsenal. ...
So far, college administrators report no such decline. But they have reason to be nervous. Anyone attending a five-year reunion in 2008 was part of the last class for which Facebook was not an integral part of campus life; it began catching on in mid-2003.
--Dana Goldstein
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COMMENTS (4)
In my experience, just the opposite.
A rollicking Facebook back-and-forth with several grade school classmates sent me into such paroxysms of nostalgia that I went to considerable expense and inconvenience to attend reunion.
Am I not young enough to understand a world where virtual encounters of one kind or another seem to be an acceptable substitute to actually seeing people?
Posted by: Bart Aciocella | June 9, 2008 4:37 PM
Well, I got lucky at my high school reunion. Can't do that on facebook.
Posted by: Brautigan | June 9, 2008 5:17 PM
I'll second Bart; I got back from my fifth college reunion yesterday, where there was record attendance and plenty of very facebook-happy people. There may be good reasons to suspect we might not have been normal, but this anecdote is directly opposed to Mr. Kushner.
Posted by: Dennis | June 9, 2008 5:54 PM
I have twitter http://www.frogmix.com/search/twitter , myspace and now facebook. Once I signed up for facebook I realized that this is too much social networking. I really don't even care
Posted by: dan | May 26, 2009 4:08 AM