The scenario:
You’re minding your own business, probably sat at home on a quiet weekend watching some TV when there’s a knock at the door. You answer it and immediately you’re poked in the chest by someone you don’t know! “Poooke! Hi, it’s me! John, from school! Remember?”.
You have no idea who this person is. “Want to be friends?” he asks. You reluctantly agree, hoping it’ll send him away. “Great, where did we meet?”. What? He knows where we met… “Do you wish to ignore this step?”, you look puzzled, what? Ignore? You reiterate to him that you met at school. “Great, can I confirm that we met at school?”. Uh… yes. “Ok cool. So what are you looking for? Friendship, dating or whatever you can get?” You’re starting to get a little worried now.
Then you notice that someone is spray painting a crude message on the wall of your house: “Alright mate! Ya dickhead! lololl”. You inquire as to what the hell he’s playing at. “Writing on your wall! Everyone can see it!”
John pops his head back into view. “So I’ve got some pictures here from school. Remember this one? Look at you, drunk, passed out in the bath covered in sick and urine.” The pictures even have captions! “I can show everyone these pics of you. Your girlfriend, work mates, real friends. You don’t get a say! How great is that?!” says John. You ask him if you can have those pictures. You don’t want people to see them. Nope. You can’t have them.
The phone rings. You answer it: “John has suggested that you be friends with all these people, blah blah, blah. John wants to play scrabble with you. John wants to know where he ranks in your list of friends! John has a host of other contrived mundane requests.”
We’ll end it there, since you’ve probably guessed what I’m writing about now. Facebook. If that happened in real life, you’d get pretty pissed off pretty quickly. Or at least I know I would.
It’s not just Facebook. The web is quickly evolving into a place where everyone seems to feel the need to know everything about everyone else. Why would anyone want to know what I’m upto every 5 minutes with twitter? Who’s sad enough to sit and watch a twitter feed. Who’s sad enough to maintain twitter feed? Is your life that boring that you need to know that in 5 minutes you’ll have a status update of what John is doing on his sofa at home? Is your life that boring that you have nothing more important to do than post your current status to a website every 5 minutes?
What of this whole picture thing? Why should someone be able to post a picture of me online, without my permission and label it with my name!? Sure that’s not a new thing to the internet, but never before would that picture be associated with a page detailing everything about me!
Why is it OK to do these things online when in the real world, this is the exact behaviour that would be exhibited by a stalker or someone soon to be slapped with an ASBO?
alright… calm the fuck down. I’ll delete all the pictures of you shall i?
Christ how about we just name this post, “Sofie is a boring loser who has nothing better to do than go on Facebook”
Thanks for making my day sooooooooooo much better…
Its a satirical piece of writing and wasn’t meant to be taken so seriously.
The point I was attempting to get at is that it ISN’T considered a problem in society when this sort of thing is online, but if it were to happen in the real world, it would be questionable behaviour. Are you telling me that if this was all happening in the flesh that you wouldn’t consider it some kind of invasion of privacy?
It’s because it’s online and not in the physical sense that it isn’t such an invasion of privacy. You can escape from Facebook and Twitter. You wouldn’t be able to if it were happening on your doorstep. This post is about what it would be like IF it were to happen in real life, and why it’s considered OK to do it online.
It wasn’t a personal attack on anybody, but a rather general questioning of why the internet is evolving into a culture where everything everyone does affects everyone else. I don’t think anyone would be interested in what I’m eating for breakfast, therefore I don’t make a Twitter post explaining it. I’m not interested in what everyone else has had for breakfast, therefore I don’t go looking at people’s Twitters to find out. But there are those on the web that can’t live without knowing whether or not some guy on the other side of the world is enjoying their waffles. Why does it matter?
I know the lines saying “Who’s sad enough to…” etc are a bit harsh, but they’re the extreme circumstances. They’re the stereotype. It’s not a personal attack on anybody.
Like with the picture thing - again, the extreme case, where people who have public profiles are showing pictures of people who are not them, and linking to a page which contains a lot of personal information. They’re asking for identity theft. You on the other hand have a private profile, its not like you’re parading pictures of me around to the populace of the planet, like some people are with other people’s photos.
Facebook does have privacy control to some degree, of which I am grateful. But not everyone uses them. Some people think its fine to go around letting any old Tom, Dick and Harry view their pictures, know their e-mail address and initiate contact with them. You wouldn’t go up to some random person in the street and offer to show them your entire photo collection. Yet that’s what some people are doing online. At least the people you’re showing your pictures to are people you know. Notice the post starts with someone you don’t know knocking your door? No, you’d reject them, just like you rejected that girl from school who tried to add you to Facebook.
You know my feelings about Facebook, and the whole Social Networking palaver, and this post doesn’t say anything that I haven’t said to you before.