Sep 01 2007
Facebook + stalking = my generation
I haven’t laughed this hard from a YouTube clip in a while. And I laugh at a lot of YouTube clips, so that definitely says something.
I think while we may not go to the extreme of dating our Macbooks with someone’s profile a constant fixture, Facebook and other social-networking sites allow us to find out sometimes an unreasonable amount of information about people we may just meet in passing.
Shouldn’t people tell you their hobbies, where they work, where they went to school, who they take photos with and all the rest rather than reading what amount to a biography on their social-networking profiles? I can’t judge cyberstalkers, as I am definitely guilty, but I am curious how all of this impacts relationships with new people and people who only communicate via fingertips.
The News Feed feature on Facebook is more invasive than MySpace, where you actually have to click on someone’s profile to learn their details. I recently had a friend change his status from “single” to “in a relationship,” and sent out a bulletin to announce the change, which reminded me of Facebook’s controversial News Feed. For a moment, I thought I might need to explain the News Feed, but with Facebook being so ubiquitous, I don’t think it’s necessary, I’ll just send you to Facebook’s 2006 blog post from when the feature began.
Another friend was joking with his wife and changed his status to “it’s complicated,” while she threw a sheep at him using the now popular SuperPoke application. I brought up the change the next time I talked to him, and he assured me they were not fighting, they were simply bored and wanted to play on Facebook.
When did all of this become normal?