I'll show you mine, if you show me yours! Thoughts on social networking...

I just climbed down from last week's soapbox, and I'm trying desperately to prevent myself from climbing right back up while discussing this week's theme of social networking sites.

But really, I think the same things attracts us to both social networking sites like Facebook, and freely-edited content sites like Wikipedia: we all want our chance to be heard, to see and be seen, to connect or re-connect with others. I've come to the conclusion that we're all voyeurs and exhibitionists to varying degrees!

I've been a Facebook participant for three years, and as with any new technology that I embrace (such as blogging!), I was seriously addicted for the first while. I was excited to fill in my info tab with what I consider to be interesting tidbits about myself, couldn't wait to create photo albums of my adventures - guess that's the exhibitionist part. And I was hoping to find or be found by some long lost friends. This was tempered by my concerns about security and privacy, and second thoughts about what exactly I wanted other people to know about me. Am I being completely honest, genuinely myself, or am I creating a persona to present to the social networking world?

The answer to that question is...it depends. I feel completely comfortable posting almost anything with some of my FB friends. But with others, I feel more compelled to edit or censor myself. I fight this urge, but it's undeniably there. Perhaps this is due to the fact that my FB friends cover a wide range of political, environmental, social and religious views, and I'm loath to offend anyone.

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon on Facebook. I've managed to re-connect with friends and relatives that I haven't seen or corresponded with for 25-30 years! At first, there's a flurry of emails flying back and forth, each of us trying to summarize the intervening decades of our lives in a few short paragraphs. Then the emails gradually decrease in frequency until we reach the point where we're not actually corresponding anymore, but merely observing what the other person is doing by reading their status updates and viewing the photos they post. Why does this happen? Has too much time elapsed, are the divergent paths our lives have taken too far apart to be bridged by the wonders of a social networking site? Have we really "connected," or are we just indulging out voyeuristic tendencies?

The people I stay in touch with most frequently on FB are people I saw, talked to, and emailed regularly before the advent of such sites. Now I sometimes feel that I have less personal contact with these friends than I did before we became FB friends. Where previously we might have gotten together for coffee to hear about their latest vacation and see their photos, now I just read a daily status update and view their photo album online - kind of a more distant connection. Maybe a lazy substitute for the effort that's required to actively maintain a friendship through other means of communication.

Then there's the whole issue of Facebook etiquette. What if you don't want to be FB friends with someone who sends you a friend request? Will they be offended if you ignore their request? Would you be offended if someone ignored you? I had an acquaintance from my jr/sr high school days send me a friend request. We hadn't been close friends back then and after perusing her FB profile, I was quite sure her interest in vampires and werewolves was not something we shared in common, and so I decided to ignore her request. But what if you do friend someone and then feel the need, for whatever reason, to un-friend them later -  what are the consequences of that? What about the people who send you friend requests which you accept, and then there's no communication from them at all - no status updates to read, no emails, no photos posted - just eerie silence and the feeling that they're watching you. Are they just collecting friends? It all gets very weird and complicated sometimes.

And now there's yet another place I have to check for emails - in addition to my Yahoo email and my Outlook email and my work email! Hmpf!

Well, I've once again established that it's impossible for me to post a brief blog entry, haven't I?!