The sinister side to social networking
As well as being great for connecting people and sharing -I’ve lately found that there’s a more sinister and irritating side to sharing your life online.
First up, status updates – it upsets me that the majority of my friends seem to be rather stupid. I can write this with confidence that the people I’m thinking of right now would never in a million years take it upon themselves to read a blog – far too many words, for one, and for two, they’re all *real* words, not awful text abbreviations. There’s very little I find more annoying than my News Feed being spammed senseless by people announcing their boredom (I really don’t care), or the inane announcements by people that they’re daring to exercise, or going to the pub. I realise that the concept of a status update is to share with the world what you’re doing at that time, but Jesus, someone tell these people to try and make it interesting! If you can’t contribute something of worth to the world, please, just don’t bother at all. Your half-arsed attempts are driving me mad. I’d like to add to this that spamming my News Feed with ‘Which Skins Character Are You?’ and ‘What Date Will You Die’ quizzes is also not cool. Nor is repeatedly joining pointless Groups set up by someone equally idiotic where the Group title is poorly spelt and lacks punctuation, and on occasion contains a kiss at the end, such as ‘lets all pray for jade goody and her two boys xxx’.
- Another evil side to status updates is the spoiler. Not good. Why would you do that? Just because you know he’s a ghost, and the little boy can see dead people, including him, don’t tell me.
Next up, the announcement. I have recently found out by status update that I have friends now engaged or pregnant. At first my reaction was that they were just lazy, or rude, for not bothering to tell us properly, but a deeper meaning emerged – that actually the people that I believed to be my real life, proper friends, actually might not hold me with the same regard. That I’m not in the inner circle that I thought I was, and I’m just another person not worth telling personally. It really comes to something when you’re not added to a text being sent to multiple people already, to be told some news. Upsetting really.
Last on today’s agenda is the newest bitter pill on the block. Thanks to the ‘See Wall-to-Wall’ feature on facebook, you can now view people’s conversations if you are friends with both parties involved, and now we get in our News Feed a note that people are writing to each other. Lovely stuff. Except when a few of your friends, through wall messages to each other, are arranging a get-together, and you’re not invited. Worse still is when you know that you would usually be invited, and you’re not sure what you’ve done to offend/upset everyone. The icing on the cake, of course, is that when you all have the same mutual friends, that everyone else gets to see you being snubbed and ignored too. Public humiliation of sorts. Modern day comedy without needing to leave the house. Memories of playground taunts ring in my ears, and I’m last to be picked in PE again…
I used to blog quite a lot – back in the days when myspace was my vice. I would spend my mornings at work furiously typing whatever thoughts had come to me that day – they were often rants. These days I’m all about Twitter – it’s overtaken Facebook, though I maintain a presence on both, and occasionally stop by on myspace for good measure. My blog received kudos and comments galore with my nonsensical witterings, until stupidly, I turned it into my photo gallery in a futile attempt to ‘promote’ my then boyfriend, a DJ, who is now long gone, apart from an entry in my phonebook as ‘Copperknob’. This is my revival of my beloved writings. Should you wish to read the works of old – 
When I read my friends updates and they have written something heart-wrenchingly emotional or sad, I sympathise greatly, but at the same time wonder why we announce it for everyone to see – is it just attention seeking? And, is it socially acceptable? And what for the unwitting reader – we’re not all willing confidants. I occasionally feel uncomfortable when my not-so-close friends statuses refer to things that as an accidental reader, I shouldn’t necessarily be privy to. For example, I have some friends whom are friends of friends. I’ve met them a few times. When they’re wondering aloud about how worried they are about their ‘Doctor’s appointment tomorrow’ and sometimes mentioning pregnancy (which I have no knowledge or interest in) – it feels like I’m an intruder. Like a spy, I feel like it’s something that I definitely shouldn’t know. However, there’s always a positive – another friend – not that she really is – I’m not sure why I accepted her – announced (drunkenly, I hope) that she ‘wants to let Matt no* she is so sorry for what said to David, and that she didn’t mean a word of it’ – which is, I suppose, a whole new level, to which I am amused, and proud to be an onlooker. There’s very little in life more amusing to me than such a public confession of this kind. I have to wonder – was it drunkenness? Idiocy? I neither know or really care, though I remain unamused at the thought that a facebook status might win her beau back over from an obvious blunder.
