This might be the first original thing (non-football) that
I’ve written in two months. As such, let’s not have a delay.
1. People do things such as liking their own statuses
(stati?) on Facebook.
May as well start with the tweet I wrote that inspired this piece. Can it get any more lame – and I don’t even say ‘lame’, which
shows how lame it really is – than that? One would hope you like your own
statuses and comments since you wrote them. That shouldn’t even be allowed. You
can’t be your own friend on Facebook. Why should you be allowed to like your
own stuff? It makes no sense. Mark Z. should have allowed for dislikes
first…oddly enough, I did write about the value of a dislike button here.
2. My parents are on Facebook.
I swore this wouldn’t matter to me. Up and down: I was going
to talk about everything in the same irreverent manner that I did before we
became friends. Sigh. I forgot how much I used to talk about things I’d rather
not discuss with them. There’s also the fact that they’ve given me reason to be
wary: my mom got mad at me because I said something anti-FSU (which for me is
almost natural) and my dad got mad at me for saying I was in Atlanta (the idea
was that someone was going to rob me, even though only one person knows where I
live and he didn’t know I was out of town until he called me the next day). I
still talk about sports and politics on Facebook, but that’s it. I leave the
personal stuff to Twitter, and that segues very well into #3.
3. “On Facebook, you lie to people you do know. On Twitter,
you tell the truth to people you don’t know.”
One of my best friends told me this, and it’s true. Now, I’m
not a liar. I tell the truth to a fault (ask my ex-girlfriends if you must).
Shoot, the times I’ve “gotten in trouble” on Facebook have resulted from
telling inconvenient truths. Fact of the matter is there are some truths that
not everyone needs to know. Guess what? Lots of people know – and have room to
judge – on Facebook. Twitter? Not so much. People respect you enough to not try
you on Twitter, but they care enough to try to be helpful. Guess that leads to
the next one.
4. I hardly know any of my Twitter peoples, as opposed to
knowing just about everyone on my Facebook friends list.
I wish I knew more of my Twitter people, so it’s not that.
It’s just that people from so many different corners of my life are Facebook
friends of mine. Many of them are from stages of my life that I’ve clearly
passed: high school, undergrad, even grad school to a certain extent. I’m not
saying I’ve passed them by or anything close: what I am saying is that I’ve
passed the stage of evolution at which they’ve seen me. I would say 90 percent
of my Facebook friends see me as a person who I’m simply not anymore. It’s not
their fault, but the interaction isn’t quite the same since there are different
conversations going on at some level. The person they’re “talking to” is
different than the person who replies. Sigh.
5. Facebook and Twitter have different functions, and I’m
more interested in Twitter’s set.
This kind-of takes from #s 3 and 4, but it is what it is.
Facebook helps you catch up with people you do know, and your network expands
accordingly. All of my Facebook friends fit one of three descriptions: people
I’ve known for five years, people who are friends with people I’ve known for
five years, and people I know from College Town. That’s it. As you can see,
there’s not much room for growth there. Twitter, on the other hand? Well, there
are people from VSB (and connected people). There are people I know from CJ’s
radio show (and connected people). There are, of course, people I knew
beforehand. I also know people from talking about wrestling and the Hurricanes.
Of course, Twitter also has a much more open process of network expansion.
---
