what freaks me out about Facebook

is not the intesity with which it has caught on, nor the intensity with which people use it for a variety of reasons, from "uploading" pics to saying yes and sending off the weirdest of apps. Mind you, these are people I would never have pegged for "the type" - I mean, like me, addictive and unable to defocus from wanting to know if someone commented on my status or what new stuff my "friends" have up there. These are people who have a life outside Internet, who travel, have not developped "Internet humps" [ in case you are not familiar with the term, this is a slight curvature of the upper body caused by overusing your laptop while sitting upright in bed or on the sofa]. So, as I said, the fact that even "normal" people have begun to "share" more with Facebook is really no problem for me - it seems normal. What freaks me out though is the sheer corectness with which Facebook chronicles people's intimate lives via their status updates.

"x xulescu is no longer listed as single" "m mulescu has changed her status to in a relationship" "d dinulescu is now listed as in a relationship and it's complicated". While twitter, as I was writing a while back, requires some introspection to unravel the signs of intimacy, Facebook is, as its name becons, a face value book of private lives. A quick run through my homepage today and I realized that a couple of my friends have gotten back together, a couple broken up, some of them had actually been dating each other.

I love Internet, I think it is a great tool for keeping in touch, linking, finding out useful stuff or simply whiling away time, but sometimes the load of data about other people's lives, combinated with a natural inquisitive nature, is simply overwhelming. and sometimes irrelevant. and sometimes tiresome.

pic via