I hate it.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I HATE IT.

Or do I?

This previous school year, I lambasted it almost every opportunity I had. Whenever someone asked me why I didn’t have one, that person would receive a mean glance and a brief five-minute tirade against the product I refused to use. Quite frankly, I was fed up with everyone’s near-addiction with the newest “must-do” thing: Facebook.

And now, regrettably, I have a Facebook profile once again.

But I like it a little bit too. What’s going on with me?

And furthermore, why am I back at Facebook in the first place?

I assume these mixed sentiments stem from a bad first experience with Facebook. My first flirt with the networking site was not one of good memories: My two weeks of Facebook activity in August of 2007 were characterized by staying up until 2 a.m. to check friend lists, writing on peoples’ walls and doing that stupid “poke” thing.

I hate that freaking poke.

I hate it with the intensity of a thousand suns all-burning at once in the sweaty arms of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s manly embrace.

Furthermore, my habitual loathing of Facebook also comes from my idiosyncratic tendency to dislike elements of popular culture.

Of course, it’s kind of contradictory for me to claim to hate popular culture when I restart my Facebook profile.

Aw, garbage truck.

So, back to the burning question at hand: Why do I have a Facebook profile once again? What do I derive from Facebook amongst the ranting, raving and poking that is so omnipresent inside its blue and white borders?

Staying in touch with people. And not poking them.

After receiving dozens upon dozens of complaints from my friends about me not owning a cellular telephone, I finally crumbled and acquired a Facebook profile once again so I could communicate with them.

Apparently, no one uses e-mail anymore. Or face-to-face conversation for that matter. But hey, they were right; Facebook actually is a great method of networking and digital conversation.

I didn’t realize the communication potential of Facebook last August because I was too busy bragging about my awesomeness through my profile details and poking people (a decision I deeply regret) instead of sending messages and talking to people about the random things college kids talk about.

So it should be no surprise to anyone that my new Facebook profile is a minimalistic one.

On it, my friends can see a very limited description of me and who I am: I am a 19-year-old male whose name is Levi Joseph Wonder, I have fewer than 100 friends on Facebook and my friends occasionally leave comments on my “wall.”

That’s about it.

After feeling kind of hedonistic and self-indulgent after attempting to reveal just about everything about myself on my previous Facebook profile, I learned a lesson about the Internet: Everybody doesn’t need to know everything about you on a Web page. Nor does everyone necessarily want to know everything about you.

Quite frankly, does it really even matter if I post my spiritual philosophy, my political views, my favorite things to do and elaborate about all of the ways I consume and contribute to the capitalist system here in America? No matter how I run it, it wouldn’t make me unique.

I learned that from my previous profile.

So yeah, I’m back on Facebook now. Do I like it? Not necessarily. But I do thoroughly enjoy the multimedia communication methods of Facebook.

I’m not poking people anymore, but I am talking to them.

If I need to talk to my friends about an upcoming gig and I can’t get in contact with them via phone, I will hit them up on Facebook.

If I want to say “hi” to a friend who I haven’t seen in four months, I will talk to him or her via Facebook.

And if I want to join a group related to things I actively do at college, or I want to meet new people or if I want to show people pictures and artwork I’ve taken/made recently, I will use Facebook.

I will NOT use it to become a monster and bite people as a werewolf, to poke people, to answer random trivia questions, to show who my “top friends” are or to brag about how unique and incredible I supposedly am.

But I will use it to communicate with my friends about fun stuff and about pertinent matters.

That’s why I have a Facebook again. I may not like all of it, but it is very handy.

I just don’t like pokes.