Facebook

This weekend I finally watched The Social Network. I really enjoyed the movie and I wonder how much of it was fact and how much of it was embellishment on the facts or just plain fiction. Either way I am amazed how someone took the idea of social networking and expanded it to what Facebook is today. Something that originated as a way for college students to communicate within their campus environment is now a world-wide phenomenon that has not only brought long-lost friends back together but has helped people organize revolts against leaders who hold far too much power over their people.

In the beginning, I resisted the whole idea of social networking. The only reason why I opened a MySpace account was because my friend told me I HAD to. Then I kept it because I needed a way to monitor my daughter’s account. Truth be told the main reason I originally signed up for Facebook was because another friend had a farm on My Farm and I really wanted to start a farm. Go ahead and laugh but it was a great way to relax after coming home from a very stressful job. Nothing like harvesting a bunch of crops and trees to calm the brain.

Well, the farm has since died away. I’ve taken every stupid Facebook quiz available and I have a total of 99 friends. I had more but I deleted a couple lately in an attempt to keep my work life separate from my home life. I have connected up with people from grade school and high school. People I never thought I’d ever hear from again are suddenly back in my life. I have a couple of “friends” who I have never met. Not many but a couple and I’m happy to know them. I now can get a daily update from my best friend who lives across the country and I get to know what my nieces and nephew are up to even though they live in other states. So I am grateful for that initial urge to farm.

There are a few downsides to Facebook. It is a time sucker and addictive habit. I find myself checking my Facebook way too often during the day on my phone and when I’m at home and my computer is on it’s usually running in the background (like right now). And don’t even get me started on the games. There was a time when I would sit with my computer and mindlessly play Bejeweled Blitz until my eyes were bloodshot (that’s what happens when you forget to blink).  On the most part it’s fun to read what my friends post. I like to know what they are doing, what they are thinking and how their lives are going. But there are times when I wish I never felt the urge to open up Facebook ever again. Sometimes you have to read things that you don’t want to see and people post things that maybe need to be kept private. I am far from innocent of this “too much information” trend but I do try to withhold the compulsion to post every thought going through my head. Sometimes I fail and sometime I just blog about it here! Perhaps it’s the price we pay for being part of this form of communication.

So I guess I will thank Mr. Zuckerberg for creating this thing called Facebook. As long as you stop trying to intrude on my privacy settings I’ll continue to happily visit Facebook a million times a day. I will post my status updates diligently and play a few silly games. And as a sign of my loyalty to your product I will now post this blog to my Wall!