Facebook

I have been a little MIA in a lot of arenas of my life lately, but especially with the blog. I just haven't had anything to say because I haven't been able to get my brain to wrap around a lot of things going on in my life. I won't go there on all the things I am questioning right now, but I do want to take a minute to talk about facebook.

I love facebook, for real, but it frustrates the crap out of me. I am not what one would call a private person, by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly if you will hold still there is a good chance I will tell you my life story, however I think facebook is maybe pushing the realm of privacy. No I'm not talking about the site itself, though plenty of people will argue that the "new" facebook greatly diminishes privacy with that annoying little box in the upper right hand corner. I'm talking about what people post on facebook.

Now I might have a skewed view on this because, seriously, I am friends with EVERYONE on facebook. I do not discriminate. If I know who you are and have talked to you once then I'm all over being friends. I have a few friends that I have made exclusively through facebook (though that is a rarity and only happens in extremely special circumstances). I don't post a whole lot of stuff on facebook. If I have a general gripe or I'm cheering for a certain football team then I post things. I post pictures to share with friends that are not around all the time. For the most part facebook is a huge address book, for lack of a better term. It is how I keep up with birthdays (totally been slacking in that field lately, so if you've had a birthday in the last month here goes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY) and how I keep up with friends from different stages of my life. Just today I had a friend post a comment about the new Footloose movie coming out and how it reminded her of a particular time during high school, she tagged all the people that were a part of that time. It made me smile and nostalgic. This is what I use facebook for. I also use it to keep up with people's growing children, as an easy way to communicate with different groups, and a fast way to send out event invitations.

What I have noticed recently with some of the people that I am "friends" with on facebook (yes I use that term pretty loosely) is that they post EVERYTHING. I'm talking intimate details of their lives. Because of these details drama tends to get started (this is why I do not post much). Things are blown way out of proportion and people's feelings get hurt. People overreact to things that are posted, whether in a way that is meant to be helpful or in a way that is destructive. It is almost as if people are needing an outlet for attention.

On Pinterest (new OBSESSION) I saw this:

I am truly starting to believe this about some people that show up on my newsfeed. Now I realize most of you that read this get click on it through facebook, so you're wondering if I'm talking about you. Odds are pretty good that I'm not, however you might want to take a moment to think about what you post. Unless you only have your immediate family and closest friends on facebook then people probably don't need/want/care to know the intimate details of what is going on. Share the extreme highlights and call it a day.

Like I said I love facebook. I think it is an excellent tool, especially for non profits and small businesses because EVERYONE is on facebook. I love Twitter too. In fact I love Twitter a whole lot more than I love facebook. A blog I follow pretty much nailed it on the head: facebook makes me hate people I used to know and Twitter makes me love people I've never met. Maybe only having 140 characters makes us think about what we really want to say and forces us from putting in all the gory details of our every day lives. Granted on Twitter I suppose your feed could look like this:

Woke up.
Went to the bathroom.
Brushed teeth.
Locked house.
Got in car.

And so on and so forth.

All of this ranting being said think of this as a PSA for the day. The end.