I’ve been on Facebook now for about two years, and I’m hooked on it. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. You see, I have an eclectic group of friends whom I love dearly in many different ways, and know from different areas of my life, like high school, college, a handful of clients from the past 10 years, and people I know from roller skating. Facebook gives me visibility for my business. But it also sucks up a lot of my time. While I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to, I tend to see things I don’t want to see, like people arguing. eschewing heavy political discourse; you know those things you don’t discuss in polite company.
Facebook is TMI. To be honest, many of my FB friends have values very different from mine. And while I don’t have a problem with that, it has changed my view of them. That’s the part of Facebook I like and don’t like. There are people I’ve never met who I hold in high esteem because we share the same values. Then there are those people I’ve known for a very long time and then discovered through Facebook just how different we are, especially when it comes to values I find important. And let’s not talk about the hoaxes and other malware spread through the social network site. Further I won’t do apps, games, surveys, or anything that requires me to attach my FB profile with some 3rd party database. That’s where I draw the line.
Jimmy Kimmel has declared this Thursday, “National Unfriend Day.” It’s the day we go through our FB friends list and determine who stays and who goes. He says we’re not really friends with these people anyway.
While I’d love to join the drum beat, I find Facebook extremely fascinating albeit quite scary. Fascinating, because it gives me a lot of subject matter to research and explore for my radio show. Scary, because I don’t want to post something that would alienate others, or cause a future employer to not hire me because of crazy rantings on Facebook. It’s just one more way to become unemployable. Hey, I’m learning this stuff too.
I think Jimmy Kimmel has the right idea. Maybe I’ll start with the lurkers. You know, the people who never post, and you have no idea who the heck they are anyway.