Did Facebook kill the class reunion?

[diamondpixienc]

I'm gonna jump right in with the issue. All of the plans for my 20th high school reunion have now come to a halt. Why? because most people (me included) do not see the point in paying to travel to see the same people you have already "caught up" with via Facebook. I mean i already know that you are married or single, have kids, and what promotion, new job or company you have started because YOU already told us via Facebook with pictures and the occaisional video too. And if you are not "my" Facebook friend chances are you are probably a friend of my friend or someone else's so should you ever come up in a conversation somebody will usually know somebody who may know you right? I mean the planning commitee used Facebook to spread the word. Lol! So, I ask you guys. Do you think Facebook has destroyed the class reunions for us? I do. Just wanted throw this out there. Have a magical day everyone. :0)

 

[Tinijocaro]

We planned our 30th reunion through Facebook only and there is nothing like face to face meeting up with real life people. Nothing like hugging people you haven't seen in years.

No, FB didn't kill the Hugh school reunion.

 

[Janepod]

I'm gonna jump right in with the issue. All of the plans for my 20th high school reunion have now come to a halt. Why? because most people (me included) do not see the point in paying to travel to see the same people you have already "caught up" with via Facebook. I mean i already know that you are married or single, have kids, and what promotion, new job or company you have started because YOU already told us via Facebook with pictures and the occaisional video too. And if you are not "my" Facebook friend chances are you are probably a friend of my friend or someone else's so should you ever come up in a conversation somebody will usually know somebody who may know you right? I mean the planning commitee used Facebook to spread the word. Lol! So, I ask you guys. Do you think Facebook has destroyed the class reunions for us? I do. Just wanted throw this out there. Have a magical day everyone. :0)

The opposite for me! Everyone convinced me to go, when I would have just blown it off. When I saw how many people were going to be there, I didn't want to miss it.

 

[Kae]

It helped ours. We had 15 people come who had not been to any of the others.

Kae

 

[ilovepcot]

Yeah, I agree with the others here. If anything, it made us even more anxious to get together.

 

[SLP958]

I do agree with this. I had a fine high school experience, enjoyed myself but, anyone I care about I still talk to or have seen on fb.
I would not take time to hang out with folks I have not cared to talk to in 15 years.

 

[Shutterbug]

Yeah, I agree with the others here. If anything, it made us even more anxious to get together.

I'm on the opposite end. It has made me not want to see those people.

 

[SaraJayne]

I'm gonna jump right in with the issue. All of the plans for my 20th high school reunion have now come to a halt. Why? because most people (me included) do not see the point in paying to travel to see the same people you have already "caught up" with via Facebook. I mean i already know that you are married or single, have kids, and what promotion, new job or company you have started because YOU already told us via Facebook with pictures and the occaisional video too. And if you are not "my" Facebook friend chances are you are probably a friend of my friend or someone else's so should you ever come up in a conversation somebody will usually know somebody who may know you right? I mean the planning commitee used Facebook to spread the word. Lol! So, I ask you guys. Do you think Facebook has destroyed the class reunions for us? I do. Just wanted throw this out there. Have a magical day everyone. :0)

Weirdly enough, I was just thinking the same thing last week. Our 20th is this year, but with FB, there isn't a need to "catch up" with anyone..I do that almost daily on FB.

 

[zippingalong]

The fact that IMO, 75% of the people I graduated with are buttholes is what killed a class reunion for me.

 

[JenM]

My 20th high school reunion was last year, and most agreed that Facebook definitely impacted the attendance. I think less than a third of the class turned up, and even the ones there were all saying that being able to catch to everyone on Facebook made the reunion less of a necessity.

 

[luvsJack]

FB not only made our 30th a success. it got us together again for a 31st and has made several small group reunions successful.

 

[Handbag Lady]

I hated my 10th class reunion, hated my 20th. I'm not going ever again. I was so bored and just didn't care.

The only reason I went to both was because my best friend made me by flying out here from Arkansas just to attend and she stayed at my house.

In all honesty, I don't really remember much from High School except two or three close friends that I keep in touch with today.




(And this reminds me of a funny story. As we entered our 10th Reunion party, everyone looked, well, older than us and we didn't recognize anyone. Did everyone just GET OLD all of a sudden?? It turned out that the 10th AND 20th for our High School was in the same venue and we were on the wrong side. That evening, we joked, "Well, now we know what we'll look like at our 20th: OLD!" Which is all fine and well, until WHAM! We were AT our 20th and we were old. Which, of course, my best friend had to mention to everyone.)

It has been 27 years this year since High School. I don't even want to think about it.

 

[Sorsha]

I helped plan our 20th (2 years ago) and FB was a huge tool in helping with the planning. We started a FB page for it, and we (the organizers) all added all of our friends from our class, then we went searching for everyone else we could remember. We asked everyone who got added to also add people, if they could find them. We used the page as a way to announce dates, events, special hotel rates, take polls, etc.

More people attended, by FAR, than had attended the 10th, so I would say FB helped. In fact I had several people tell me how useful the page was in helping them make the decision to come based on activities, and seeing who else had committed to attend.

Now, mind you, attending the reunion reminded me that I really didn't like a good 75% of the people I went to school with, so I quietly unfriended them when we disbanded the Reunion page. I know similar things happened to others too. No need to keep 300 friends on your friends list when you really have nothing in common with them and don't intend to ever actively seek out their company again.

 

[JessB320]

Hmmm, interesting question . I didn't not go to my last reunion (10 year) but I do enjoy catching up with people on Facebook . Not sure if I'll go to my next reunion or not. If I do it will be because I want to see some of the people from Facebook. So I guess Facebook is encouraging me to go

 

[diamondpixienc]

My 20th high school reunion was last year, and most agreed that Facebook definitely impacted the attendance. I think less than a third of the class turned up, and even the ones there were all saying that being able to catch to everyone on Facebook made the reunion less of a necessity.

OP here! This ^ is the current problem. The latest update was so far only less than a third who attended the previous 10 year reunion have actually committed so far and the rest seem to have decided that hey, i'm cool with catching up via facebook so. Right now they are going to keep the "poll" up through Friday and will decide if they will either just extend the deadline and/or scale it back to just an evening banquet a/k/a a prom re-do. BTW somebody suggested lets just "Skype the dang thing" lol!

 

[Disney Doll]

I think FB has impacted class reunionos because the people from your past that you want to keep in touch with you usually can through FB. Anyone else I would see at a class reunion I wouldn't care about (not that I would wish them ill but just aren't inererested in being/keeping in touch) so why go to spend an evening with people you're not interested in?

 

[Family Fun Mom]

In our case, Facebook actually sparked the reunion. "Seeing" all the old friends on Facebook made us want to get together, so we planned a reunion on an off year, it was like 17 year reunion or something. We decided to make it a multi year reunion, spanning about 4 graduating classes. There was a huge turnout, with lots of out of town visitors, and everybody had a great time.

 

[kamik86]

I left high school glad I wouldn't have to see most of these people ever again. I make a point of pretending I don't know the ones that I still run into (since I still live in the area) so although I"m 99% sure we haven't had a class reunion (only would have been a 5 year so far, DH didn't have one either and he still talks to some of the people in his class - same school) I wouldn't care if we did.

 

[Tinijocaro]

I found that the longer you are away from high school, the less you care about only catching up with former high school friends. I made friends at our 30th reunion with people I never conversed with in Hugh school. Many of those people have either changed or I found I had misjudged during the high school years.

Ten and twenty seem to be about getting married, getting jobs, babies, and houses. A kind of "look what I've done with myself". Thirty was so different, many people just came in hugging everyone, whether they ever were friends or not. By he end of the night, I had a whole new set of High school friends.

 

[JessB320]

I left high school glad I wouldn't have to see most of these people ever again. I make a point of pretending I don't know the ones that I still run into (since I still live in the area) so although I"m 99% sure we haven't had a class reunion (only would have been a 5 year so far, DH didn't have one either and he still talks to some of the people in his class - same school) I wouldn't care if we did.

I remember feeling this way the first few years after highschool