While I remain in very good touch friends from way back, of which I am very grateful, it’s been much harder to keep in touch with college/grad school friends. We are scattered all over the country, now middle-aged with many different threads pulling at us, demanding our attention.

I went to college in the email/IM age. We got some social media in grad school, but it wasn’t until I was doing my postdoc that Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and all the rest really started to take over.

Email has all but died for anything other than work, online ordering, and spam. IM is long dead. It’s quite possible that some of my college/grad friends are on Facebook, but alas, I am not. Anyway, it’s not like anyone posts there anyway. I only know of one friend from that era that actually posts on social media (Bluesky). Two others are on Instagram but haven’t posted in years. The only place I can actually find many of these people is on LinkedIn. Yuck.

How did these potentially wonderful means of communication turn into such shit?