Facebook

I'm young. I'm of the modern generation. I facebook, I twitter, I have little arguments about the use of the names of social networking sites as verbs, and I usually feel twitter is, but facebook isn't. I of course, feel that the meaning depends on its use and there is nothing wrong with "facebooking", I just don't think it sounds pretty.

However, I come to you today rom that all too familiar position of having been surreptitiously spurned by facebook. Ah yes, when someone makes a passing comment in their status that is ambiguously broadcast to everyone but you know without doubt that it refers to you. I will avoid going into detail on this matter. I will admit that I may be a little bit in the wrong. I may be oversensitive, perhaps I spend too much time on facebook, perhaps I have read a little too far into what I see. However, something I said has been taken out of context, spread in the form of a rumour, and has now ended up on facebook, with me as the injuree. Such trivialities, I accept, should be ignored. I am going to take no action into the matter. Tempted as I am to write a long rambling apology to the girl in question, I feel that as I have nothing to apologise for (I don't, I'm not just being stubborn) that would make it seem that I did in fact do or say something malicious that warrants an apology, and therefore make this situation much worse. So I shall be quiet.

Eventually, we draw to the real point of this entry: Is facebook a good thing? Has it changed our culture? Are we more exhibitionist? Are we less discreet?
The simple answers to the above are: Largely, yes, yes and yes.

In more sensible times, not many years ago at all, people had conversations. We would see a friend in person, or on the phone, or communicate by letter or email, the defining point is that it was a conversation between two people or a select group.
We could choose who knew what, we had a vague idea of who from our group would tell who from any other group, and of course, vicious gossip and rumours spread, but they were said, in a second. They were out there, never to be removed, but they also carried no trace. Now, of course, anyone can go online and read back through anyone's facebook conversations and take note of every opinion, flirtation, and argument that has occurred. The deletion of a post is not merely a deletion, but has in and of itself its own meaning. Delete posts with the greatest of care.

If you had an argument with your partner, you would go and talk to your best friend. Now, you tell everyone you know on facebook. Then your partner, reading this and feeling hurt that you have just broadcast an intimate detail of your relationship to the world, posts their own feelings. A brand new argument stems from the old one and takes place in public, with everyone you know following it like a soap opera, taking sides and pitching you against one another. It's sickening. But there's no cure for curiosity. It's an integral part of human nature. It's who we are. So the only way to stop people following all the little dramas in your life and magnifying them is to keep them out of the public eye.
Can we manage that?
Older people probably can. They are used to discretion. They are also more mature. They are capable of having private feelings and ignoring them whilst on facebook and instead posting about a piano they have for sale. My concern is that younger people have become so reliant on this outlet of the facebook status that even if they had some horrible experience and resolved only to use facebook for trivial matters they would struggle not to post their innermost thoughts every time they become upset, angry or lonely.

I could go further, and suggest that this outlet has led to a generation of people who have no idea how to keep their emotions in check, and will grow up believing that it is entirely reasonable to tell everyone everything.
It is not.