With some 660,000 members (way over half a billion, folks), Facebook is certainly a "thing." Like very many of those hundreds of millions of people, I have been on it way too much lately, for a variety of reasons. One reason is my new shopping blog, World's Coolest Stuff, which I certainly hope you will visit, bookmark, and from which start all your online shopping. Hey, we all gotta eat.
Another reason is my fascination with it. Yesterday and today I tried to look at all the "friend suggestions," a list of people who know the people you know. Even though I'm sure that I have far fewer friends than average, both days I had to quit before getting to the end of that list -- if there is an end. The little scroll bar would grow longer at every turn. But what I saw thereupon was the fascination:
People who know people I know, of course. Hundreds of them. People whose names I recognized but didn't know why. People whose names I recognized, did know why, but still I didn't know. Interesting people. People whose pictures showed interests that I share. Handsome men. Beautiful women -- lots of them. Weird people, judging from pictures, or names, or both. Organizations. Activists. All walks of life. Baby-boomers. Their kids and grandkids. Friends of my kids, and their friends. People with foreign-sounding names. A cross-section of the world, so it seemed.
The beautiful women part got my attention on several levels, but one level was that it got my social-scientist, research juices flowing. When I was in grad school, we studied various "isms," like racism, ageism, and some less-recognized isms, like weightism and lookism. Lookism. Lots of beautiful women on Facebook. (Forrest Gump voice:) "Ah'm not a smawt may-an, but ah know what lookism i-yuz." One theory in lookism is that people who are culturally viewed as attractive get more attention, more friends, more favors, etc. Hmmm. I would love to see some research on this as it applies to statistics on Facebook. I mean, after all, we're talking about what will soon be three-quarters of a billion people in the study population. Geez. Staggering.
So that other blog of mine I mentioned? The one that is 75% shameless, capitalistic marketing and profiteering? It came to be because I was already on Facebook all the time; and I recognized that sometimes people listened to what I had to say. If they might buy something, and I get a few cents each time, why not?
This blog is another forum for what I have to say, too, but not about stuff to buy, as fun as that is. It's a forum for more serious stuff, like the one point of this post:
Facebook is scary.
Well, scary only if you misuse the device. There are lots of ways to abuse this privilege just like there are ways to abuse everything. If you use Facebook to stalk or bully, then yes, scary that it reaches so many. If you use it to get a little snapshot of people you know, then where is the harm. I, for one am enjoying reconnecting with people that I have not seen in 35 years. I get to keep up with what my family in other states are doing, and joke around with people currently entwined in my life. When someone posts something I don't like, well that is his freedom of speech. I, in turn have the freedom to ignore posts I don't want to read.
ReplyDeleteThere is, in fact, an end to the "friend suggestions" list; however, if you add more friends, there will be tons more friend suggestions. I absolutely HAVE to have that area clear, or it bothers me. =P
ReplyDelete