Mom got a facebook???

I've always been skeptical when it comes to social networking sites. When I heard about the creeps on myspace stalking teenage girls and boys, I figured I could live without an online profile. For this reason, when friends bugged me to sign up for facebook, I replied, "I'll think about it," and quickly changed the subject. In no time, however, facebook had become the dominant topic of every conversation. There was simply no way of getting around it. Frankly, the isolation I felt not having a facebook was beginning to bother me. I knew what I had to do. I swallowed my pride and created a profile.
In no time, like millions of others across the country, I was addicted. After receiving a friend request from someone I knew in first grade, I would spend hours reading his info, scrolling through his pictures, always checking for the comments his friends posted. I soon discovered there was a name for what I had become. A facebook stalker. Fortunately, after months of wasting hours at a time on facebook, I realized 99.9% of that which I discovered online was trivial and rarely had any effect on me. My point is, just because someone posts something personal about themselves on facebook doesn't make this interesting or worth reading. I know this seems harsh but it's the truth.

Image by Laughing Squid via Flickr

I would finally like to stress the fact that one should not obsess over the number of friends one has online, for this does not indicate the number of TRUE friends one has in the real world. Recently, my mom, a new member of facebook (apparently parents are beginning to sign up for facebook as well), called me up in a panic, practically begging for a plausible explanation why two of her "friends" online had defriended her. The fact that losing two friends on facebook was causing my mom distress is humorous of course, but also rather troubling, for it demonstrates just how serious some people take their online profiles.