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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Facebook-a Caselook.

I’m becoming an old fuddy duddy. Or should I say, a faceb’uddy duddy.

Lets all talk about Facebook shall we? I’ve been hearing more and more a frightening concept; That Facebook is a legitimate form of friendship.

What what?

I was anti-facebook for years. Nooo I am not joining that book du face I would snipe. I had already caved with Friendster (remember him?) and Myspace and I refused to have another profile floating out in cyber land. Now like everyone else, I’m hooked. I love seeing new photos, statuses, events and I relish thinking in third person status updates daily. It’s an undiagnosed sickness I tell you. I know a few people out there who have never even jumped on the facebook bandwagon, and they may be the smartest ones out there. Of course they are urban legends aren’t they, sort of like the Lochness monster and Bigfoot. You hear about them but you’re not 100% sure they exist.

I read this quote in an MSN article recently by a young girl about to graduate college. This age seems to be the largest component of the FB idealism and movement.

"In college, there's a total dependence on texting and Facebook to flirt and communicate. And then we graduate and don't know how to be real people."

Again I say….what what? We definitely have a problem here Houston.

Listen, Facebook is great it’s a fun keep in touch forum, it’s entertaining and a good time passer. But with all its good points, it seems to have begun to change the course of human connection a bit for the worse. I remember a time I didn’t text I didn’t facebook. And in many ways I was more present. Life was real time. There were of course, telephone chats with the telephone attached to the wall with a cord mind you. Now that’s modern connection my friends!

There are two schools of thought here; Facebook is for keeping in touch with friends. Facebook is a networking site. Which one are you? Do you have 300 friends or 1600? Do you really keep up with all 1600 of those people? Do you absolutely need that many folk knowing what you had for lunch or if you got divorced? Maybe you’re a bit of both. There’s even proof that FB can hurt your finances, say if your employer catches you bad mouthing the boss and cans you or debt collectors use it to track you down. Oh Facebook you naughty meddler.

Some people use statuses to vent their frustrations, announce their husband was cheating on them, when they went to bathroom, addresses of where they’re at. Does no one believe in privacy and discretion anymore? And then of course there’s the facebook ‘friend delete’. I personally believe in the delete. Some people feel it’s the equivalent of a guillotine or drive by shooting like you actually ended a 'friendship'. If we passed each other in the hall in high school 23 years ago, you say mean comments or we met once with never another hello I sense a buh-bye in the future. I don’t want everybody knowin my biz’ness necessarily anyway there’s something to be said about privacy.

Now I know there’s some facebook youngin’s out there who may disagree with this analysis completely and defend their stalwart hero Facebook. Facebook….you da’ bomb! I think the most important factor to always keep in mind here is; are you out there living your life as well? There are a lot of lonely people sitting behind their screens and I know at times it can heighten my own sense of isolation say if, on a Friday or Saturday night, I find myself at home perusing facebook pages feeling like everybody else out there is having a great weekend and I just sat on my couch eating potato chips. And then some friendships the pattern has started to be that you only communicate through facebook .Say no people! Nothing can take away from face to face time. That is real friendship. Let’s enjoy facebook for what it is but also take a stand to prevent it from destroying the earth in one cataclysmic farmland application. Trust me when I say your life will be better if you put down the Facebook and texting and get out of your apartment. I’m going to take my own advice here too. Maybe Oprah will jump on this! Oprah!

So listen up people born anytime after 1990: Facebook is not friendship. It is merely a network tool, a mass email website, formatted fun words on a computer screen. Log off and live.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go update my status…