The facebook obsession.

Facebook privacy. We've all heard about it. Especially recently. People getting fired over this comment,or  for people uploading photos that make them look like a crackwhore, or people getting bullied on their wall because it's easier than getting into a playground punch up. Ironically social networking websites are teaching us how to be completely antisocial.

My blackberry vibrated at 1 am this morning with an email from a friend, who had found out off a friend, about a photo of me on facebook that he didn't like. He doesn't even have facebook and yet somehow, this photo managed to find its way to him. It scared me. It scared me that someone was trolling my facebook page for information about me to give to someone else, to hurt me. Why would someone do this? Why do we have this infatuation with a website that gives us a sticky beak into someone elses life. We use this site to look at our news feed and find out what parties are on, who was at those parties, what our friends are doing at that very moment in time, whose birthday it is, who is in a relationship with who, who is working where, who lives where, and who likes what.

It occurred to me this morning, that despite the fact that the photo in question was nothing out of the ordinary, I feel absolutely violated. 500 + people, are able to look at my facebook, and are able to get information about me that I don't actually think I want them to have. I was about to delete my entire profile when I realized that there were some benefits to facebook, such as actually keeping in touch with friends who are overseas and such, but that aside, I have no use for it. I didn't delete my whole profile, but I have amped up my privacy settings so that only about 10 people can see my photos.

I wanted to delete "friends" because I am sick of hearing about people being bored, or people whining about school and uni and about people who I scarcely speak to. Here's the catch. If I delete people, I feel out of the loop. I feel like I would be missing out on something, not because I couldn't troll peoples pages looking for information about them when I am bored, but because I want to be able to talk to people, when I want to talk to them. I want people to be able to contact me if they need to. Gone are the days when if you wanted to be friends someone you spoke to them a little, hung out a couple of times and built up a trust with them. It's all in the click of a button now. You send a request, they accept and BAM! Your friends.

It's this horrible catch 22, where you are obsessed with these websites, while at the same time, you can't stand the sight of them. It's a cyber addiction. When you could have stopped you didn't want to, and now that you want to stop you can't. The social networking website world is becoming reality, and life is becoming a distorted, chaotic mess of statuses and friend requests. Seriously? Just make a phone call.