Gradually I’ve become interested in Facebook. Although I don’t see myself as getting a Facebook account anytime soon due to various reasons. Most Facebook users are there to connect with old friends. While others, it seems, try to connect with as many friends as possible. Where do you draw the line? Is it people who you would sit down and have a conversation with or go out to eat with? Or would it be that person you sorta knew in college, but never really hung out with?
The problem it seems as with the internet in general is that we have developed ways of having virtual friendships. People we meet online. Instant messages. Yet we never really have time to do things in the real world. We feel safe in front of our computers reading wall postings and feel as though we’re important as long as there’s always someone online in our 200+ member buddy list. It’s time to ask ourselves, has Facebook, Instant Messaging and even the Internet itself hurt face to face communication? I think it has. Even before we go out, we must check our email, something unheard of 20 years ago. We spend hours on the computer, updating our Facebook profiles, but never seem to get out of the house.
I’m sure some people live for Facebook wall posts and friend requests, much like others are addicted to World of Warcraft or Second Life. This is nothing new. I saw it in college were people gradually dropped out after discovering text based adverture games via the internet. They would spend all day in computer labs and then the next semester they were gone. A semester’s worth of tuition wasted.
My distain for my own Facebook account is the problem with too much information. I’ve read blog posts and seen pictures of persons from the past and it’s somewhat troubling. Am I getting too much information? Information that I didn’t want to know? Information that I shouldn’t know? And yet even as I write this on my own blog, I am guilty of that same occurance. Certainly I’ve posted some thing here that I shouldn’t have posted (which is why the archives for this blog aren’t available).
Still even looking through what limited information is available for non-users on Facebook, I’ve found myself repelled from it. Perhaps it’s ghosts of the past of cruel people I want to forget.
Coupled with Facebook is my own similar distaste for Myspace. Myspace is much more freeform than Facebook and information is even more readily available. I’ve ranted about the hyprocracy of Myspace, and since Facebook remains of mature clone of Myspace, I couldn’t very well obtain a Facebook account without looking like a hypocrite.
So there it is, dear reader, why I don’t use Facebook. At least not at this point in my life. Convince me otherwise and I might think about getting a membership one of these days.