The New Facebook and Why I Might Not Like It (at least, till I try it)

Before I launch into this tirade, I think we're losing a lot of the mystery that used to come with human experience. We're living in an age where information is easy to access, free to read, and hard to avoid. 24 hour news channels, social media, news feeds, smartphones, and other information-technology innovations have influenced the way we perceive and interact with the world. Benefits have been gained but prices have been paid.

We are more connected than we have ever been before, not only to people we know and love but also to the world at large. We are more empathetic, more empowered and more informed. We are finding ourselves reunited with friends we'd never think we see again. Chance encounters in the street are extended and given a digital life. The price for this connection seemed to be a little chink of privacy and we didn't mind paying it. Afterall, we used our own free will to join Facebook and part of the deal was that the privilege of stalking (which meant that you could be stalked too).

It wasn't too shocking. You got to look at photos, write birthday messages, organise things to do on a friday night – but what if you got to look at the entirety of someone's life history? A biography coded in website language, accessible by iPhone, organised by dates, filled with pictures and updates. Sure, if you stalked hard enough, you could kind-of-tell what someone is like purely from their profile. But what if Facebook collected all your information that you've ever shared (from the beginning of your Facebook), sorted it chronologically by year and turned it into a single page that any of your online “friends” could read?


This, is what Facebook is moving towards.

While the optimist in me thinks it is quite cool, I can't help but feel that a price has been paid and unlike last time, it feels a lot higher than what I'm comfortable with. This time, Facebook is taking away the magic and mystery I want to feel in getting to know others by cramming it into some wierd-ass narrative form that stands in perpetuity. Yes, I have wiled away many an hour posting inane links and webcam pictures onto the damned thing - but I like how it's only temporary before these little stories disappear underneath a mound of new status updates.

But as much as I like playing with Facebook, I love getting to know people. I'm curious and I'm somewhat obsessed with finding out what things we have in common or in difference. But most of all, I love how a relationship blossoms – I love how a connection grows and evolves and has twists and turns. It's a story we share as we hurtle towards the inevitable and exquisitely sad ending that we all share. Everyone has a different story.

Different people mean different things to me. Just as I am sure that one person means different things to their friends, their families, their lover(s) and their workmates. I might be a total goofball around my closest friends but I don't think it necessarily means that's what I'm like with everyone else at uni, or work, or at home. (actually... that's probably not true- I'm pretty freakin goofy)

Maybe I'm getting angsty about it but I don't WANT Facebook telling me who someone is - it's like spoilers. I don't want it to fill in all those beautiful little gaps. I don't want to find the morsels that have slipped through our memories or were never brought up in conversation over a coffee. A person's relationships and identity defies order and categorisation. It's lived and experienced. It's not put on display as a webpage of photos and status updates as Facebook – it is worth so much more than that. (and perhaps in terms of online marketing dollars to companies, too)

So I end this essay (ahem, rant) with a few shout outs which will hopefully sum everything up:

Firstly Mark Zuckerburg, stop pushing this technology on us. We don't need to contain our lives in some artificial, neat little box – because our lives are more significant than what photos we've shared, what parties we've been too and when we broke up with our highschool sweethearts.

And finally, to everyone else. I hope one day, we truly understand the sacredness and the complexities of our relationships and identities. For now we need to start having a long, hard think about what we think is acceptable to share and how we all relate to one another online (and offline).

Perhaps it's inevitable, as we connect more and more with people, maybe we will need Facebook's history-of-life-scrapbook - with information and "friendship" overload, you could argue that efficiency is needed. I think it's inevitable that social networking will be (I would argue it already is) a fact of life and relationships now and we have to learn to live with it. But we need to constantly remind ourselves that relationships are beautiful, lived things. We must never forget Facebook can never be used to fill that void.

But then again, maybe it doesn't intend to, maybe I'm just overreacting - I guess when Timeline comes along  we'll be able to truly judge whether it is a good or bad thing.