Facebook scares me

No, really, it does.

I've never been close to any of the social networking technologies.

Yesterday a friend talked about another friend which was never around. Everyone was curious about this mysterious person who just seem to pop here and there for some people, but never for the others.

So then, as tech savvy as my friends are, they all went to the book of faces. A friend showed us all this mysterious person's FB page, and we all gathered around to see it.

From the innocent beginning of comments like, "ohhh, so that's how he look like", then it was escalated into, "hey, he went to here and there! thought he always said he's busy", and, "oh, look, he's engaged", when then his pictures were browsed through.

I was there.. and I would be lying if I said I didn't giggle or join the chat of commenting this guy. But it then dawned on me that we are actually doing the very thing of stalking this guy through his FB. And it horrified me to think that someone would do that to me if I have an FB page.

Well, I don't have it. I guess that saves me from that possibility, maybe?

While I understand the many advantages of FB, the possibilities it give us to keep in touch with everyone, all the long gone friends, separated by distances or activities. I still somehow can't get used to this trend.

Facebook scares me in that... it gives us the illusion of we are knowing someone closely,- through his/her statuses, profile, pictures, comments-, while we might actually know very little of he/she compared if we directly get in touch with her/him.

Call me outdated, but I still believe in personal communication as the only way to properly get in touch with someone. Call, mail, chat one to one.

Sure, shouting in FB or any social network site it is an easy way to update everyone all at once about your things. But it's also very open, thus impersonal.

Thus... despite the image of the distance-less that we created in sharing the updates, we are also actually creating those implicit distance... that impersonality.
With the public nature of it, surely disclosing something very personal is impossible. And for others to response to us personally too, it would take an effort of either being shamelessly just disclosing everything in public space or use some extra effort in messaging privately or chat... or just be quiet.

In the end.. it would be the safe choices that are taken..
we'd seem to be open, to share much. And others too...
while actually it's all unconsciously orchestrated to still fit the norms..
Sharing as much as you can.. without ever really get too personal.

(to be continued.. and pending further editing)