Facebook

I've already been on Facebook for several years, having been in college when it first came out. As we all know, the college crowd, tends to be most enamored of it. It's useful, helps me keep in touch with pseudo-friends and real friends, and helps me stalk my ultra fake friends who I never actually talked to after college, but know almost everything about them via Facebook, including where they live, their phone number, their career, their relationship, how they are feeling at the moment. Creepy. But hey, we all do it.

Bwoy recently joined Facebook despite his years-long resistance. I was so proud of him and eagerly clicked on his profile to see what personal info he decided to post. To my horror, I discovered he wrote NOTHING about our relationship! I, on the other hand, had written I was "in a relationship" for many years. I was mortified and confronted him directly about it (through the phone though, not Facebook). His excuse was 1/4 fishy, 1/4 lazy, and 1/2 legitimate: "I don't want anyone knowing the details of my life!" Pishaw. What an obvious Facebook newbie. So I decided to break up with him, Facebook-wise that is. I deleted "in a relationship" and replaced it furiously with "single;" my Facebook contacts were notified of this immediately in their newsfeeds.

Within 24 hours, I recieved several messages from concerned psuedo-friends, real friends who obviously have no clue who I am, and random pple who I haven't spoken to in years (Usually beginning with, "Hey NP! Just thinking about you... etc etc... when are you in town next?") The last bit cracked me up. I even learned from several people that I was the object of conversation when people speculated that I had broken up with Bwoy.

In the end, I had to explain the situation gently to my psuedo-friends, and I had to yell at my real friends for assuming I would actually tell Facebook I broke up before I told them. Interesting social experiment. The site really is a gossip, stalking, networking vine all in one. Ah, the power of Facebook.