What’s with Facebook?
I felt quite hip starting a blog, after all I’m new to this world wide web thing. As you can see my initial enthusiasm has waned a little – partly due to the fact that my Internet access keeps crashing at home and logging on at work is a bit cheeky. But now my fellow course mates on the MA have launched an Alumni blog and a Facebook group.
My only knowledge of Facebook to date has been checking up on Lovely J and her page. Several ‘young people’ here at work use it – but it just seems odd to me.
For a start there’s this option where you enter your status – eg. ‘Sally is pre Halloween’ or ‘Rachel is asleep’ – then there is the fact that you can ‘poke’ people or indeed be ‘poked’ by them. Then people can say they are your ‘friends’ just because they happen to know your name. Very odd. I find it all a little disturbing. Am I just an antisocial old fuddy duddy?
A n n e H o l l o w a y 
But dahling anyone who is anyone has a facebook presence! Musicians, writers ….
Oh Aunty Hen, it’s not that bad. However, the way you described facebook is pretty accurate.
Did you not know you can also send your friends gifts?! Yes, for example there is an application called ‘Twisted trick or treat’.
Then again, I think I would fall off my chair and roll around the floor laughing and holding on to my sides if you made an account. Sorry.
Oh and by the way, why am I not mentioned in all of this? Does my visit not deserve some recognition on your blog?
Love you Aunty Hen, thanks for having me in your lovely mad farmhouse home. XXX
You may be an antisocial old fuddy duddy but you’re in very good company! I do find it a bit ‘sad’ when people over the age of about 25 join myspace and facebook etc and get busy making asking to be other people’s ‘friends’. As the mother of a 14-year-old daughter, I actually find some aspects of the phenomenon more than a little disturbing. There was a programme on R4 a couple of weeks ago about cyber-bullying and the awful things kids say to and about each other on ‘social networking sites’ – unlike traditional bullies, who can’t physically get at you once you’re safely behind the door of your own house, Bebo-bullies can invade each others’ homes, bedrooms and even mobile phones day and night. There is no escape. When taken to task about their slow rates of response to complaints about appalling defamatory and bullying behaviour, Bebo claimed that their team of moderators worked round the clock deleting inappropriate posts, but soon conceded that there was approx one moderator per 1.5 million subscribers. Baling out the Titanic with a teaspoon springs to mind. On a lighter note, a friend and I confessed to each other that it took us both an embarassingly long while to realise that ‘lol’ now means ‘laugh out loud’ – nobody told us that it had stopped meaning ‘lots of love’! Undoubtedly an indicator of extreme middle agedness . . .
Lovely J (also 14) stopped using her Bebo page for a while because she kept getting rude stuff written on it. It is very intrusive I think – but appears to be a ‘normal’ part of life now. I used to confuse a lot of people in my emails when I used to refer to Lol: Lol’s away, Lol’s got a new job, Lol’s not well etc – because Lol is Laurie my other half!
Ha ha, lol! Given the subtitle of your blog, I thought you’d appreciate this: http://julietdoyle.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-life-in-nutshell.html