Perils of online social networking sites

Isn’t it the way these days, that you go out and inevitably somebody whips out the ubiquitous phone camera and all of a sudden you find yourself thrust in a fake pose. Everyone is pouting, sticking their chest out or doing something strange with their fingers – each with the hope that they’ll be caught at their best angle, and a ‘hot’ pic will be produced and subsequently tagged on facebook.

For some, facebook is an on-line shrine to the minutiae of our daily lives


Why do people feel the need to constantly update their status with the most mundane and pointless of sentences? Personally I couldn’t care less if someone was ‘watching Eastenders and wondering why their steak got burnt in the oven’. Even worse, I don’t need to hear other people’s opinion on that very status.
There has been such an on-line celebration of mediocrity that this is something of a phenomenon.

I don’t like the passive aggressive way in which someone will update their status saying how pissed they are at a ‘certain’ somebody. It could be their hapless boyf/ best friend/ sister whatever. Rather than addressing the issue face-to-face or via phone, they’re quite happy to have their 345 friends be privy to their emotions.

There’s no anonymity anymore. I’ve been tracked down by people who I haven’t seen since early high school, and who I’d happily not see again. I’ve had them asking me inane questions like ‘what I’ve been up to for the past 10 years’. I manage to fob them off, only to have them pop up on facebook chat, brimming with meaningless chatter. I don’t need to know that what they’re doing at 3:15pm is ‘ thinking about eating the last biscuit in the packet’.

I don’t give a f*ck

And what is it with the ‘recommended’ friend application?! Surely if I LIKED the person recommended, I’d have sought them out? Sometimes I see the recommended list, and I literally shudder and start rocking back and forth. Do I need to emphasise the fact that there was a REASON why we ‘lost touch’ when I was 16?! Let’s not re-live old PE and maths class experiences.

I find it endlessy ironic that we spend so much time on-line , leaving inane wall posts and uploading photos of one messy night to another, as if to illustrate that we have interesting lives. Surely if we did, we’d NOT be on facbeook??

I hate how vain it’s made me. before Facebook, I wouldn’t care if someone were to take a bad picture of me. I’d probably never see it, thinking it would be relegated to some old photo album, or even thrown away.
In this digital age, however , there’s a paranoia that some renegade photo will sneak up on facebook, and I’ll be tagged in a dreadful photo in which I’m trashed/ my hair has gone flat/ my skin Is a strange sallow hue and I’m definitely not caught at my best angle.
Normally I wouldn’t care, but when it gets uploaded to a site where my current flame, frenemies and those back home can see, then I aint happy!
This brings me to my next point: ex protocol. If you’ve updated your relationship status to ‘being in a relationship’ and the relationship goes horribly wrong, how do you judge then update the facebook status accordingly? Is it a break (in which case, we optimistically leave the status as is) or have we broken up, in which case we list ourselves as SINGLE.

So when the relationship does go Pete Tong, the ex needs to be deleted.

I’ve had to delete so many exes as I spend countless hours STALKING them. I look through their photos, hoping they’ve gotten fat, looking at their wall posts, cursing the hot blonde who has appeared alongside them in the latest barrage of tag pics.
I’ve also had to delete their friends, their relatives., only to re-ad them in 6 months time. it’s just one big mess

I just wish my life wasn’t so mundane at times, that I felt the need to log on.

Facebook has its advantages. It’s great way for me to stay in touch with my family and mates down under, it’s a great place to find out about events/ nights out etc, and if you want to procrastinate, what better site is there?
It’s only perilous mid break up / if a camera is whipped out on a big night/ and if you actually believe that all your 400 friends actually give a shit about you – when only half of them probably do.