Facebook Dialogue

Susan wrote an interesting blog post, and when my response hit, like, half a page, I thought that maybe I should just write about it here...

I accidentally introduced my parents to Facebook. In the Summer of 2008, a group of friends and I went to Vancouver, British Columbia for vacation. Every night I uploaded all the day's pictures to Facebook, mostly to get them off my camera and to make room for new pictures. When my mother called me to ask how the trip was going, what we'd done, I mentioned I had uploaded pictures to Facebook.

"I don't have Facebook," she had said. So I told her to have my brother log in to his account so she could see the pictures.

And that's where I went wrong.

Within an hour, I had two new friend requests: My father and my mother. "We wanted to see your pictures," my mother had said. "And your father wanted to comment on them." To this day, they still tell people, "Well, I only got on Facebook to see my daughter's Vancouver vacation photos."

It's now 2012. My sixty-one year old father can't go ten minutes without checking Facebook. He's friends with almost 200 people, all co-workers, old college buddies, and professionals in his field. He's constantly checking his Droid to see what his friends have posted to Facebook.

"That's the only thing I don't like about this phone," he once told me. "The Facebook ap is crap."

And what does he write about on Facebook? Which bars he's visiting, where he's drinking, random thoughts that pop into his head... His last ten posts have mentioned beer six times. Normally I don't care what people write on Facebook, but he's friends with co-workers and professionals in his field. I really just want to say, "Dad, you're a VP within your company. You don't write about drinking and post nothing but pictures of GIR from Invader Zim!"

Not that he'd listen; he thinks it's all in good fun.

I made a rule not to friend anyone I work with. Not that I write anything bad (mostly it's Star Wars and video game related, with the occasional rant about a student), but that's not the point. I don't want to open a dialogue with my co-workers that isn't work-related. I have my Facebook page locked down so you can't search for me nor find me; I don't need my students friending me thinking it's okay. (I also don't need my friends' parents friending me, either, but that's another story.)

I am friends, however, with one co-worker at my university. She and I knew each other before she started working there, and it didn't feel right to unfriend her. I don't normally read her stuff, because we're not that close of friends anymore. But that doesn't stop me from judging her. She's getting married soon, and the other day posted how she's enrolled in an eight-week exercise bootcamp program to lose weight before the wedding.

I called a co-worker over to my desk and said, "Look what she just posted to Facebook!"

My co-worker rolled her eyes. "That woman is a STICK!" she said. "She doesn't have any weight to lose! What the hell is she thinking?" And we proceeded to spend the rest of the day mocking her.

Companies now want to check out potential employee's Facebook pages to see if there's any questionable material. I guess people are fast and loose with who they friend on Facebook, and companies want to make sure their employees aren't embarrassing. I feel it's an invasion of privacy, just like asking someone how old they are or whether they're married in a job interview. Again, not that I have anything to hide, but I wouldn't want to work for a company that demands I fork over my Facebook password. All they're going to see are photos from Vancouver and a couple vacations to Disney World, anyway.

When I first joined Facebook in 2004, it was a college-exclusive site. I compared it to an online phonebook; you could list all your contact information and that was about it. Later you could add photos, aps, status updates... And now it is what it is. Of the 123 people I'm friends with, I only communicate with, like, five of them. We post pictures and videos to each others walls, comment on occasional status updates, but that's about it. I check Facebook once a day, maybe two, just to see if there's anything new.

What has social media done to us, though? My father is always pulling out his phone to check Facebook. I remember people being upset I didn't have a MySpace page; now people look at your weird if you don't have a Facebook page let alone a Twitter account. Is it an addiction, or just the way people are now? Is it expected or assumed that everyone keeps up with the changing times? And when did that happen? When did keeping up with the latest technology and trends become common place? In the late 70s, my father was called a nerd and made fun of for building his own computer. Now if you don't have the latest iPad, there's something wrong with you.

Thousands of years ago Plato stated that writing would be mankind's downfall. Wonder what he'd think about Facebook?