Baby infants with e.mail... 26.03.09
I’m not addicted to
Facebook, but some people I know think they might be.
Facebook…I hear you ask…what’s that?
Well, for a start it’s not a book made of faces or
filled with faces or anything like that. It’s not even a
face made of books either. Facebook is a kinda web site,
an online community of people who, even though they
might ignore each other in real life, can be ‘friends’
with each other when they are online.
The whole phenomenon is kinda weird really, as much for
the fact that Facebook has been hijacked by ‘older’
people in a way that other social networking sites such
as Bebo have not.
On Facebook you can be ‘friends’ with people, but you
just can’t be friends with anyone. That’s because on
Facebook you have to ask somebody if they’ll be your
friend and they have to confirm that they will. |
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Think baby infants with
e.mail. (“Will you be my friend please?”…. “Okay.”)
Once you’ve got past that step it’s all pretty much
plain sailing and it’s easy to accept people as your
friend on Facebook.
For instance even if you don’t know somebody all that
well, you can still say ok we’ll be friends.
That’s because being friends with them on Facebook means
nothing really. Well not as much as it does in the
actual, non-cyber, internet real world.
I mean, even though you’ve accepted somebody as a
friend, it’s still highly unlikely that they’ll turn up
at your door at an opportune moment with €20 in their
pocket at a time when you really need €20 to pay the
window cleaner or the milk man or whatever.
In the real world, with real friends, that might just
happen, but not on Facebook.
On Facebook you can have the illusion of having lots of
friends and all you need to do to keep them is make the
odd comment about a photo they posted.
And maybe you don’t even need to do that. Maybe you just
have to click on the accept button and hey presto you
have a ‘friend’ that you never communicate with. Umm,
okay so maybe it is like the real world in some ways.
Another of the big hits on Facebook is the fact that you
can tell all your friends what you are doing at any
particular time.
Exciting as this might actually sound, believe me, it’s
not. Most of the time it’s just a case of reading that
Mary is… ‘just back from shopping’ or John is… ‘hungover.’
I’m not sure why we need to have this type of
information, but it’s the kind of information that is
readily available on Facebook and guess what…people love
it.
In fact so much so that people are getting to a stage
where they feel they are addicted to this site.
Yes, really…addicted. Apparently in the same way that
some people feel they can’t function without their
morning mug of coffee, there are some people who feel
they now can’t function without finding out if John’s
hangover is over. |
Well, okay, maybe they
don’t know a John, but you know what I mean, they need
to get online and check the latest news on what their
‘friends’ and the friends of their ‘friends’ have been
doing.
And then they need to do it again maybe a half hour
later and if they don’t see any of their friends online
they might need to stay online for a while just to see
if any come on.
Why this is I’m not really sure. But I reckon whatever
time they update the pages so that online ‘friends’ can
lend me €20 if I need it, I might update my Facebook
status to addicted… |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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