More Trouble Than It's Worth

I've always been a bit antisocial--shunning the mall during middle school, avoiding high school dances, and frowning upon clubbing while I was in college. Today, is no different; if you've read my previous post you'd know that my "reserved" nature sometimes compels me to eat alone, in my car!

With this track record, it's no surprise that I've taken to social networking with less enthusiasm than most. I refuse to by a fancy cell phone that makes texting easier because I HATE texting. And don't even get me started on the futility of Twitter! The only social networking site that I "participate" in (if you can call it that) is Facebook, and even that's at a bare minimum.

I opened a Facebook account after the "extremely persistent encouragement" of a friend to join. I signed up and I actually enjoyed it--initially. Then the pressures started coming. The constant need to Superpoke people or risk hurting their feelings. The invitations to play the compatibility games. The requests to be someone's friend or to join this group or that. Who has time for all that? The few times that I am logged in, I see half a dozen people commenting on something a mutual friend has said, while I've been neglectfully silent. I even missed someone's baby announcement so of course my congratulations were absent. I feel guilty and I worry that my friends will think I'm being rude or callous. But trust, I'm never guilty or concerned enough to rev up my activity to keep better in touch. Please!

Maybe that's all for the better. Recently, a high level person from administration added me as their Facebook friend and is waiting for my confirmation. This is the last person anyone would want having access to their information. It's obvious they're trying to spy on me, but with office politics as they are, I have no choice but to confirm the invitation. Luckily, my antisocial nature may be advantageous since there's little activity in my profile to suggest that I goof off during work. But I'll still have to go through all the content that is there to remove anything that could be potentially incriminating, which is a hassle.

When I first signed up, my profile was only available to my real friends. I revealed everything about myself so that they could get a better sense of who I am. Now that I've added more non-friends as "friends," I've found that I have to "clean up" my profile and reveal less and less of who I am. Now it's more of a tool for making plans with true friends and for finding long-lost contacts.

Even revealing the bare minimum of information about myself started to lose its appeal when I learned that identity theifs could use your data to guess passwords and break into your bank accounts and other personal records. It became even more scary when I realized that the information could potentially be monitored, not only by your employers, but by even more powerful people.

All in all, I'm definitely under the impression that Facebook is becoming...