Facebook: A Dysfunctional Friendship

Does Facebook need to be involved in everything you do?  Apparently, it thinks so.  Earlier this week, the company announced that they will personalize your internet experience by allowing websites and apps to integrate profile information from your Facebook account so they know your tastes and interests.

In plain English it means that Facebook has turned you and me into a digital whore and they're our pimp collecting the money.  I'm not really a fan of Facebook's increasing tendency to offer up users' information to other sources as a default setting.

Of course, Facebook would argue that they're more like a good friend who is trying to help you get a better experience.  I'll humor them and look at my interaction with Facebook as a friendship.


In the beginning, Facebook was just happy to have me as a "friend,"  but soon the company started to take our relationship for granted by exploiting it for financial gain ie giving profile information to advertisers.

Despite all that, I've given Facebook the benefit of the doubt.  Although, it has only gotten increasingly sketchy over time like that friend that seems normal at first but the more you get to know the person, you realize he or she is crazy.

There were signs of Facebook's craziness.  Soon it wanted to know more and more things about me because Facebook claimed it would make our friendship better.

Even worse, Facebook decided that it knew what was best for me as the website started suggesting things such as who my other friends should be and when I should check in with old ones.

I never joined MySpace but, I think Facebook tried to kill it because Facebook thought I was hanging out with Myspace behind its back.

Now Facebook is in full blown stalker mode with its personalized internet experience plan as it wants to make sure that it knows everything about me and follow me where ever I go on the internet.

Facebook is trying to take advantage of me like it's Ben Rothelisberger in an Georgia club and I'm a drunk a girl.

Listen Facebook,  I need my space because you're smothering me.  Also, we're not really friends but more like acquaintances.

So get it straight, I'm not your friend, buddy or your buddy, guy.

    

Everybody is Big Brother

You're the biggest threat to your privacy.   By using social media sites to constantly inform peers of your interests, beliefs, locations, opinions, and life details, it means almost anyone can watch you like Big Brother,  the all seeing and all knowing fictional dictator from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

In fact it's downright scary how similar social media has made modern society to Orwell's vision of it.   Individuals suffer real world consequences for actions or content posted on sites such as Facebook and Twitter because unknown to them, authorities are surreptitiously monitoring them.    

I guess Sandra Bullock's awful 1995 film "The Net" tried to warn us that people's privacy would be invaded by their internet activities, but I never could get passed how unrealistically easy it was for Bullock to order a pizza online.  It's still not that easy, efficient, or common place as it was portrayed in the movie.

And she was using a dial up modem to boot.  It would have taken at least half the night for her connection to even go through so she could order and another half of the night for the pizza place to actually receive it.

Giving away our right to privacy is always major concern, yet millions of people are doing it.  Why?  Well, there are several reasons.  The primary one being that social media has convinced us that we're all important and people need to know about our lives.  Apparently that's all Big Brother had to do to trick us into divulging this once guarded information.

You're not compromising your privacy on Facebook or Twitter,  you're informing and entertaining people with details of your life.  We're almost all guilty of this as being part of social media networks appears to be a requirement these days.  A person not participating in one is as rare as someone who still uses a beeper.

But think of all this in a different context for a moment.  If someone you barely knew came up to you on the street and started reciting all the information that you've posted, you'd probably be pretty freaked out about how much the person knows about you.  In fact, he or she would seem like some sort of crazy stalker instead of someone that casually checks the updates on their social media networks.

Also, I'm convinced people and especially teenagers are getting stupider.  Seriously, I don't understand how kids can still be getting abducted over the internet.  It's not like this is still the mid 90s where we assumed everybody on internet was safe and then all proceeded to use sketchy America Online chat rooms full of predators.

Not to mention, teenagers seem to like posting photographic or video evidence of themselves committing crimes.  That's a good idea if the next video you want to star in is prison security footage of inmates doing unpleasant things to you.  Kind of like what happens to the monopoly man in prison.

With the emergence of Foursquare, a location-based social networking website for mobile platforms, things could be getting worse.  It makes a game out of declaring your location in real time, which is fun until your apartment gets robbed because you just had to let everybody know that you were out eating frozen yogurt.

Of course, this doesn't mean that all social media networks are evil, no one should use them.  Actually, I'm as addicted to using Facebook as anybody else.  It's just very ironic that people complaining about the Big Brother mentality of government or society violating their privacy are the same ones carelessly providing intimate details to random people through social media.