1. You don't have to tell everybody everything. You really don't.
So often, I go on Facebook and I end up reading things that I didn't necessarily need to know. Those annoying pregnancy trackers aside (Note: congratulations and all that, but I don't give a shit what your baby looks like until it comes out), I see a lot of mindless, meaningless fluff and chatter on Facebook that honestly becomes irritating to me. I feel bad saying this because I know some people get off on small talk, but...no. You know what? I don't feel bad, because I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way and I reserve the right to have my own opinion without having to explain or defend every single thing I say.
2. And they probably don't care most of the time, anyway.
This is true. Most people probably don't care, and I'm guilty as charged from both sides of the fence. I realize that when I post a nauseatingly cute photo of my cat, some people might be like, "Enough with the cat already!" I guess I post it for the few who will appreciate it, and everyone else is just gonna have to deal. When you make a post online for many people to see, it's really very difficult to pick and choose your audience...that's just how it goes on the Interwebz. Nothing new here...just a different format.
3. This is nothing personal...really. It isn't.
It isn't. Just because I don't care what you had for dinner doesn't mean I don't like you or find your other posts a little more interesting. So quit crying already.
4. You don't have to be friends with everyone. You really don't.
It's totally okay to decide not to be someone's friend, whether on Facebook or otherwise. I think when I was younger, I felt sort of a social pressure to maintain friendships even if they were possibly harmful to me, or if I no longer had anything in common with that person or something.
Every time I'd end up having a falling-out with someone, I'd feel really guilty about it and developed this policy that I never wanted to burn a bridge or have bad karma with anyone. But as you get older and you get away from the college experience a bit-where socializing is basically forced upon you-, you start to realize how impossible it is to maintain this standard, and that furthermore, you're under no social obligation to make friends with everybody.
Facebook has a way of trivializing "friendships" that to me, is sort of shallow and obnoxious. It got worse when they introduced the tiers of friends: "close friends," "acquaintances," and so on. I've managed to end up with a lot of people on my Friends list who seem nice enough, but I couldn't tell you for the life of me what they look like, what their favorite color is, or how we met, if at all.
I'm just not into that sort of thing. I have a handful of close friends and I appreciate them deeply...Facebook doesn't really do a very good job of encompassing how much I care about them. It's a great way to communicate via Chat and Messages with people who you already know and just want to talk to, if you can't go see them in person. But to build an entire social life based on online communication? Well, 10-15 years ago, it would automatically brand you a social outcast and a weirdo. Go figure that it's perfectly acceptable- and encouraged- now.
5. There is a significant difference between a "friend" and an "acquaintance."
See above.
6. Sometimes the past should stay in the past, and sometimes you should reach out and keep in touch with people better.
But in either case, it's your decision, and you shouldn't feel compelled to talk to your grade school pals just because they're on your Friends list. If you don't want someone tagging you in awkward photos from the 90's, just say so with a little grace and most people will understand, because nobody should ever have to see photos of you wearing Umbros with your bangs parted in the middle.
7. Most people can't write for shit.
I'm sorry to say this and to risk sounding like a snobby bitch from the bowels of academia, but it's the truth. Even when people manage to master the fine distinction between "your" and "you're," I'm constantly appalled at the clunkiness of their statements and the rampant "text-speak." Even when I post from my phone, I try to at least show some sort of proof that I can speak and write English pretty well.
8. Big Brother is watching you poop.
It's bad enough that I still dredge up things I wrote on the Internet ten years ago that I kinda wish I could delete from the Internet and un-Google somehow. But to now have Facebook harvesting information about me that could lead to God knows what? It's just too much. While I don't buy into all the Orwellian paranoia, I do find apps like Girls Around Me disturbing, and I think Facebook has made people far too casual when it comes to revealing personal information online.
On a related note, I also find it sad that the Internet has become such a wasteland for our culture. Doesn't anybody care that kids will grow up without knowing what books, CDs, or pay phones are? That all of their history will be on the Internet on a cloud somewhere, instead of in tattered photo albums and worn videos (or even DVDs)?
To put it in a less archaic, Luddite fashion, let me just ask you this. Nostalgia aside, if the Facebook server went down and everybody's profiles were wiped out, what would you lose? And does that bother you? Would you lose your favorite vacation photos? Your funny Notes? Your Messages from beloved friends and family? Doesn't it scare you to think about that information someday being completely inaccessible? Isn't it weird to have your whole life online?
It bothers me a little bit. It always has, and that's why- like a squirrel harvesting nuts for the winter- I bury my information in various places so I can dig it up in more than one spot if I have to: on my hard drive, on external drives, in notebooks, on Livejournal, on this blog, and on Facebook and MySpace. I try to duplicate as much as I can when it comes to saving my writing, music, and photos, because that way if something happens, I won't be totally up shit creek. Every year or so, I go through everything I can find and I decide what I still want to share, and what I want to save for myself.
Facebook has complicated this process because when everybody was forced onto Timeline, I'm willing to bet I wasn't the only one scrambling to partition my profile in such a way that not everyone on my Friends list could see everything. Why? Because as Talk Talk says, it's my life!
As the Internet becomes a necessity, a utility right up there with electricity and gas, my advice to anyone on it is to tread carefully and try to think ahead to 2022...in ten years, what do you want to leave behind? When I look at some of what I wrote and posted online ten years ago versus now, I really wish I could edit it a little more carefully.
Then again, it's thanks to Facebook that I finally developed a better sense of boundaries about these things...somehow, once everybody else started sharing everything, I began to withdraw. And now, I don't really know what's on my mind...all I know is that I don't really feel like telling everybody.
