The Practical Facebook User

Facebook is maligned by almost everyone who opens their mouth to say something about it.  In some ways, I’d have to agree with them: it’s closed a lot of human contact that used to create our social relations.  But in some ways, I can’t quite be as intense as others in the denouncement of Facebook.  It gets groups of people together, at least virtually, who are already part of a community — schools, workplaces, and global locations.  It’s very big at my own university, where students don’t get out that much!  We need a little push sometimes.

I registered for Facebook in July 2005, the summer before entering undergrad. A high school friend told me about the site, which was still just a way for uni students to network then. No old people or high schoolers until later in 2005! I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with Facebook, other than to use it as a substitute for texting high school friends who didn’t follow me to university (I didn’t have texting on my phone plan then). I wasn’t even that into computers or the internet before uni. I bought my first computer from the school in July. So before that, I had been subsisting on family desktops and dial-up speeds as high as 56 kbits/sec!

When I joined Facebook, I joined a crapload of groups that “expressed” me. What I didn’t understand was that each of these groups also “expressed” around 75% of the other 2,000 or so other schoolmates also on Facebook. To this day, I am unable to stop being in a lot of groups because “Oh, it isn’t like it’s not true. I do like spicy foods like all most other people who aren’t into bland edible-rock-coloured-globs with the consistency of pea soup.” I’ve been in the group Sudoku Addicts for just under 3 years now. I never check the group page.

It’s the same thing with friending people. And since when is “friending” a word? It’s like a bastardised version of the correct grammar, Zuckerberg style. When I used to only meet people in person, I would say I “befriended” them. And now I have all these friends I never talk to and never really met. More than that, I am now friends with a bunch of people I cannot stand in real life for more than a few minutes at a time. I am friended for being friends with someone else or part of a group I only identify with on an irregular basis. I friend people when I meet them a few times and never converse with them ever again. I am friended by people who don’t go to my school and have otherwise never had contact with.

The problem of privacy got more urgent when the creators decided to open Facebook to the public.  Then, not was it possible to be suggestively messaged by people my own age, it became possible to be virtually leered at by 40 year old people and jailbait still in high school.  The jailbait didn’t even flatter me, since none of them were hot anyways.  Otherwise, it would’ve at least been a confidence booster!

I’m a little concerned about my own privacy in Facebook, although this blog will reveal my online presence to anyone who knows me personally.  They have measures to protect your privacy but everyone in groups and pages can see you exist (there)!  Sometimes I only want some people to know my online whereabouts and Facebook has yet to perfect such an invisibility system.  In addition to googling people in question, I have even turned to facebooking them — it’s not stalking if you’re checking their legitimacy.  Even if I can only confirm their network and name, it’s a good search option.  In fact, I facebooked Roissy and found a bunch of people from his blog!

/*Yes, that is an IOI*/

He seems pretty paranoid about revealing his identity but with this lax security around his account and friends list, I would think he is only being a very sly PUA –> the way a piece of string interests a cat who cannot reach it.  It’s too bad; I wanted to “friend” him…

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~ by paperdreamer on July 10, 2008.