Everyone’s a star. Our perfect lives are now on display for all to see, envy and comment upon. There now exists one more place where you can be, what you want the rest of your friends (if only tenuous) to think you are :). Some of us have it down to perfection while we portray the perfect jerk, achiever, party hopper or all round ‘chill’ guy or gal. Why doesn’t everyone have to know what exactly we are doing or thinking?
The facebook phenomenon is in step with the general trend where voyeurism is an indispensable part of the average persons lifestyle. Reality shows, personal blogs, twitter feeds, facebook profile investigations 🙂 etc., make us all part of this trend, with varying levels of participation. Ranging from smug observers to narcissistic participants…we each have our own reasons to be involved. Updates about our kids to the colour of our underwear…its all on facebook. Obviously then, it’s also nice to be able to control what others see or know about us. Given our modest and private dispositions, we have developed our own set of rules on how we communicate online, about the things that matter to us. Here are a few examples;
Lots of pics of kids and family, that’s what life is all about anyway…yes, the new furniture, car or home does find its way into the frame but hey, it happens. It’s also crazy how the huge mansion or SUV makes our family members unidentifiable…but then, the blue speck is the daughter, the white speck is the mom. The message is clear…family matters.
We have a lot of friends and are proud of it. Our friends are only out numbered by the alcohol glasses/bottles in the photograph or the cigarette stubs in the ashtray. Sometimes our left leg seems to have a strange attraction to the shoulder of another (usually, but not always, of the opposite sex), and is often dangling from that location. The main thing is we have a lot of friends, intimate and otherwise…the left leg, however does not draw any distinction. We know to party.
We are sooo busy. It’s only right that all have to know how busy we are…that’s what the facebook status is there for. The focus is of course, on the fact that we have important things to do.
We are a sharing personality…we love to share ‘everything’ we find online with ‘everyone’….and we will find a way to let them know by sending them stuff not only via our wall, but also their wall AND email for good measure.
We can make you laugh. Our humour is manifest in frequent sexual innuendos. Oh yes, we be funny!!
There’s much more including the facebook farming, mafia and treasure hunting communities own set of rules (e.g: you have to send your manure to help with someone else’s farm if they have been so good as to send you manure…or some such). I’m pretty certain a prolific writer somewhere is documenting all the different rules that have come to be in the course of our perfect online life. Future generations could attend university courses on these new rules. Speaking of future generations, our great-grand kids will have access to copious amounts of data on how we lived and farmed in our perfect online worlds. They will know what really mattered to us.
Note: This article will be shared on facebook in accordance with the etiquette of the day. I claim my 15 minutes in more ways than the average person.
Disclaimer: The article does not in any way portray my facebook friends, especially if they plan to send me occasional gifts and/or remember me favourably in their wills.