is Ashton Kutcher in the house?

You may remember a post I wrote a while ago on BlogHer about Facebook and family etiquette. I was reminded of this recently, when in a kind of stinging gesture, my brother (yes, the same brother in that post) eloped with his girlfriend. And guess how I found out?

Yes, it’s true.

I found out that my brother had gotten married from Facebook.

Apparently, telling their seventy-eleven friends on Facebook was more important than picking up the phone and calling people in their actual families.

I’m getting kind of old, I think.

I waited until well after April 1 to post about this, as I wanted it to be clear–this happened in real life. I was not punked.

I have, at this point, talked to my brother, and I’ve basically forgiven him for it (although will I ever let him forget it? Not likely!). I’ve also ‘met’ my new sister-in-law, by talking to her on the phone for the first time (previously, I had only met her on teh internets). I’m feeling oh-so-very-pomo.

We did, eventually, get a wedding announcement, and I guess there were days when just getting the wedding announcement with no phone call would have seemed like the height of bad manners. Those days appear to be over.

I’ve been having some work experiences lately that I describe (mostly to the other moms that I work with) as my ‘cautionary tale moments.’ As in, ‘observe me, the mother of school-aged children, you mothers of less-than-school-aged children.’ Learn from my (and landisdad’s) mistakes. Do not forget to sign your children up for spring break camp until the week before spring break. You will be bringing that kid to work with you ever day during spring break. And that? Is BOOOORRRRRIIIINNNNNNGGGGG! Just ask my 8-year-old.

But I digress.

The thing that’s going on with my brother though, while it feels like a potential cautionary tale, is a little hard to translate into an avoidable mistake.

What I really can’t get over is that I appear to be related to a person who I only know through the internet.

I guess back in the day, when people lived in one village their whole lives, it was possible to have a cousin or something in a neighboring village whom you had never met.

But in this day of hyperconnectivity it seems both ridiculously old-fashioned and also (as previously pointed out) post-modern, to have this problem.

Do you think a complete set of William Gibson novels would be an appropriate wedding gift?

April 6, 2008. family life, meta. 12 comments.