Facebook Fiasco

Last night I went on a Facebook rampage. I deleted near on fifty friends I'd say. If I hadn't talked to you for ages, or even at all, on Facebook, then you were deleted. I asked myself, what is the point of being friends on Facebook if you aren't friends in real-life? This is the all time big dilemma of being on the social networking site.

For instance you get talking to a local in your town one night and then the next day either they request you to be their friend or vice versa. Sometimes you might post a little comment on their page that relates to the conversation you were having or asking if the rest of their night was good. This is usually where the relationship ends, unless you thought they really bounced off you well and you'd like to be real-life friends. Sometimes no correspondence is made at all and all you both want to do is do a bit of a creep on the others' photos.

Just by them being your friend they can now gain access to your entire life since Facebook, in pictures. People who aren't on Facebook and who don't want an account are still on it, it's inevitable. In this day and age your picture is somewhere on the net, and you'd be horrified to see how many of your photos come up in Google image search just because of your attendance on social networking sites.

These acquaintances that we meet on regular outings get to see where we went on our holidays two years ago and with whom. They know what we did last Saturday night when we told their cousins friend that we were feeling ill and stayed in. I know that everyone has a choice in what they put up on Facebook but when you are on a night out and there is a camera shoved in your face, you put on your best Next Top Model pose, or silly face and the flash goes off. The next morning or afternoon you wait anxiously as the photos go up in dribs and drabs and there really is no escaping them. Even if you untag yourself, everyone who is friends with the camera-owner will see them. Is Facebook taking over our lives and is there a way to escape it?

So going backwards, this new friend of yours who you really don't know too well, gets to see who you hang out with and how good or bad you take a photo. Is this really what we want?

My friend-deleting frenzy began because I started to feel that Facebook was taking over my life. I would go to work for a few hours in the morning and be on the Facebook by 4pm for a good few hours. I don't even know exactly what I was doing. I'm not really the snooping type but as my hours on Facebook increased I did start to go onto random pages and check out photos. What benefit was this to me really? That answer I'll never know. I do like looking at the fashion going on in the photos, but do I really want to do this with the person being unaware? I just don't think that people who aren't my friend would be bothered to check out my photos, but hearing more and more of friends on randomers pages, who really has checked out photos of me on the internet?

If you're curious about who I deleted, well it was people who I had never interacted with on Facebook, people who I hadn't spoken to in years, old secondary school friends that were, in retrospect, just acquaintances to get me by back then. There was also people who I felt I just didn't want snooping in my photographs anymore, others from abroad who I will never contact again (we have to move on sometime), and people who I might chat to in the shop for twenty seconds, but who really just aren't, and never will be my actual friend. On the other side I kept people who I haven't talked to in a long time, but still don't mind being connected with them, a few good looking people (someday) and others I felt I nearly had to keep as friends. Does this mean that Facebook really is sucking me in to the extreme when my thoughts are so focused on deleting social networking friends?

I think Facebook can be a hindrance to your social life. Say for instance you fancy someone or think you'd like to become friendly with someone, but then you see that they either have a girlfriend, are a big slut (in your Facebook-stalkering eyes), or are hanging out with that girl that you really really detest, then it can change your mind of them. Instead of getting to know someone in person and then making your decisions, we are letting Facebook make the decisions for us. Seeing a person with extremely drunken photos up with them legless in every photo might turn us off them, when in reality they could have taken a few drinks while on antibiotics and it was just a once-off occurrence.

I went to a friends house the other evening. At the time of the conversation, there were two other girls and a boy there. We all are either working part-time or unemployed so therefore we found out that we had all passed by the guts of our day with Facebook and the internet. One girl mentioned reading an article that a fellow friend had posted. It was a lenghty article that I myself had also read, as had the other two. We realised that we were all in the same boat. Are we really doing our brains justice by using Facebook intensely? Does Facebook do our self-esteem any good when we view the world and its mother's mid-Autumn sun breaks and expensive dresses?

This type of thing started to freak me out. We were using Facebook as our main entertainer instead of sourcing other things to do. I began to feel anxious over what is up on Facebook and everything that people can see of me. I said to my friends the other night, "What did you think of the photos of my Saturday night out?" knowing full well that they had seen the photos.

I am admitting here that I am one of the culprits and having been out a good bit in the past few weeks and taken photos, I began to feel pressure on myself to put the photos up the next day so that mine could coincide with others' photos of the night and before the buzz had passed. I myself am becoming a serial Facebooker and I now think that it's time to change a few things around.

I know a few people, including my mother, and mainly people around her age, that are not on Facebook, but the thing is, because they have made a vow not to be on it, they feel as if they are missing out on people's lives. These unFacebookers miss out on event invitations, their niece's wedding photos, picture's of their grandkids on their first day of school, or knowing that the meeting in the Sailing Club is cancelled next week. This is also the reason why many others have joined Facebook. It's so that they are kept in the know and don't feel left out. Many people don't bother to call others anymore because they can either see the answer on Facebook or just start a chat with them to find out all the details of their week away to Spain. Is it all becoming impersonal to the extreme?

The reason why I don't want to delete, or more realistically, inactivate my account, is because I too don't want to miss out on things. Okay so I could narrow my Facebook usage down a considerable amount to the basics of just checking out the new photos of myself and my close friends being posted, and mailing people when I have thought of them and when I truly want to chat to them. The thing is when you have a spare moment to yourself and are feeling a little unmotivated, Facebook helps pass some time.

With all of this negativity towards Facebook, there are some pluses. It lets me keep in contact with people who I have met abroad or close friends who have gone abroad for a considerable amount of time. As I have just said I can private mail people to have a chat, even people who I might not have a phone number for. Then this does bring around the thoughts of negativity again. Why can't we just use old-fashioned email where they send me a few photos as attachments every once in awhile and the photos that they actually want me to see at that? If you are only friends on Facebook and don't even have their phone number then are you really friends, and if not, then what is the point? Is it that nothing can be private now in this modern age? Hearing about people actually getting stalked and abused on Facebook, is it about time that it was all just put on the back burner and we can all get back to our real lives? Will it ever end or will I be on Facebook for the rest of my life?

I am seriously considering going back to the phone as my main source of contact, because right now it doesn't feel as if it is. It may be just one step back from the internet and Facebook but it makes it just that little bit more personable. You are singling the receiver out in your text, rather then letting all your and their friends know you just asked them "How did the pastry dish turn out the other evening?"

Now as a blogger who is not well-known and who maybe doesn't post as much as she should, how am I to get my name out there and get people to read my article? Back to Facebook it is, because I just know there are many people with their eyes on the screen waiting for someone to post something even half decent to while away even 5 seconds of their time.


(This article is not against Facebook users, go ahead and enjoy being a member. Being a Facebook user myself it is my own personal opinion on what the hell is going on.)