The comic I chose was a man waking up the next morning looking at his laptop and seeing that he gained 30 more friends on Facebook overnight. Obviously, this individual may have been drunk the night before while on Facebook and did not recall what he had done.
Facebook is a phenomenon that is unlike anything else out there in history. It's immediate response and chance to connect instantly, which is too easy and scary. I use Facebook on a daily basis and had to become very selective about what image I want to convey to my Facebook audience. I've tried to just keep it to family and close friends, but slowly but surely fellow co-workers, old bosses, and students of mine keep popping up with requests. Eventually I break down and add them into my friends' lists. When I saw the above cartoon, it made me crack up because I literally have turned around after a few weeks and gawked at my account when I realized that the 200 friends I thought I had was really like 300. Keeping this list down has been a challenge.
This whole Facebook thing has presented me with a challenge of how I relate to people, especially those that I never really considered a part of my life. I have former co-workers that I dropped because I felt enough time had done by that their usefulness may have expired. However, sometimes I receive a message back inquiring why I deleted this from my friends list and they would like to be added again. It is very awkward. There is no way to avoid these conversations and all the sudden now I don't really like this bold, too automatic intrusive new social tool. It's a bit ridiculous. Now, I am having to justify to my current bosses why I don't make it a habit to have my bosses on my Facebook. However, I still have my old bosses that I have added after I left that job. What is really appropriate when dealing with former bosses? There should be some type of etiquette on how we use Facebook with the various types of categorizations of people in our lives.
Combing through my friends list and having to make tough choices on which friends stays and which ones go. It's an awful predicament. There have been a few times when I thankfully got rid of someone whom was annoying. They post constantly to Facebook with random, scary thoughts that make you see them in a light that perhaps is not flattering. A close family friend who was a former babysitter of mine had lost her mother a few years ago, whom was a close friend of my father. One good example was with a former babysitter of mine. She was a close family friend. However, a few years ago her mother passed away. Her mother was a very dear friend of my father. The death of her mother led to many personal problems including: divorce, alcoholism, and other issues that contributed to her downfall. It was apparent she was a bit unstable, to say in the least. Her constant rants and statuses on Facebook concerned me. After reading one of her posts, I would be call my mother and ask her what an earth was this all about? I finally had to drop her because it was so emotionally exhausting to read her crazy statuses and commentsbvious life failures that I couldn't take it anymore. Others in my family did the same too. Finally peace again. She has tried to add me back a few times since, I have "ignored" these requests. My mother was not so lucky and felt guilty and added her back again. I hear it's more of the same again and now my mother is regretting once again this addition to her friend's list.
The introduction of Social Media has changed how we communicate with each other forever. Gone are the days of phone calls and writing letters. Even writing an email is not the norm anymore. How we relate to each other now is very odd if you compared our social skills from 20 years ago.
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