What is Facebook, and is it a good, bad, or indifferent thing? (and should you accept my "friend request"?)

"Facebook" (hereafter, fb) is not necessarily good, bad, or indifferent; like so many things in life, it's all in how you interface with it (see this related post) .

fb is an ethereal interface that gives us superficial insights into the lives of other people. There is a broad range of what i call the "level of intimacy" with our "fb friends." this level of intimacy is characterized by the following essential factor:

• whether or not, and to what extent, you interface with the given "fb friend" in the "real world."

so, perhaps there is a range of intimacy, from 0 to 10:

• "0" - you don't know this person at all but none-the-less felt compelled to accept his/her friend request
• "1" - you don't know this person, but this person is a friend of a friend
• "2" - you don't know this person, but you see their comments on friends' posts and decide that they're cool and then send them a "friend request"
• "3" - you met this person once at a conference in Vegas five years ago
• "4" - you've rubbed shoulders with this "cool person" in your industry
• "4" - you slept with this person in college (two decades ago)
• "4" - you lived in the same dorm and were good friends with this person in college
• "5" - you were best friends with this person in high school
• "6" - you worked with this person at a software start-up in the Valley for two years
• "6" - you've been in three local theatre productions with this person over the past several years
• "6" - you work with this person every day in what we call the "daily grind"
  
• "7, 8, 9, 10" - ok, now we're getting into the realm of family and people with whom you have a "real" friendship; people who actually exist as a part of your life.

so, you can be "fb friends" with your spouse, with your parents, your children, your siblings and various other family members. you can be "fb friends" with your colleagues at work; with fellow members of professional societies; with fellow parishioners; with fellow actors in your local theatre group; with your neighbors; etc., et al.

there is also representation of geography; that is, friends who live in your neighborhood, your town, your state, and elsewhere.

there is also representation of eras; friends from your childhood; from high-school; from college; from your adult-life.

Some people cross these various characteristics (perhaps you married your high-school sweetheart, for example).

All of these various "levels of intimacy" make for a broad representation of "friends" on your "friends list."

which leads me to ask: do you "filter" your posts, based on who is on your "friends" list? In other words, do you censor yourself on fb? Or do you just try to "be yourself"?

i once read that one of Mark Zuckerberg's goals for fb was to enable people to "just be who they are," no matter the context, in an effort to live less "compartmentalized" lives. i'm paraphrasing here, but the idea is that it requires much more effort, and is far less authentic, to maintain different personas for the various roles we live (husband, father, son, colleague, weekend jock, one of the guys, grassroots organizer, neighbor, parishioner, etc., et al). i like this idea, and i would argue that it is liberating to just "be yourself" and not filter or censor yourself based on how we might be perceived or judged by a broad range of other people. so fb could be a mechanism to break down barriers amongst and between people, however superficially it may begin. or perhaps this is overreaching, i don't know yet.

Then there is the question of how we interface with fb. I myself do not participate in any of the "games" (such as Farmville, etc., et al.) because i am utterly disinterested in said games. Nor do i "poke" anyone (as said poking seems to cross the line of good manners.) My interfacing with fb is limited to posting status updates and the occasional photo or link. This posting of status updates is the strength of fb, i think, because there is such a broad range of the types of status updates i've read.

Perhaps the variety of status updates could be categorized as:

• utterly innocuous & vapid statements
• brief quips meant to evoke sympathy, awe, envy or a chuckle
• deep epiphanies
• meaningful quotes from religious figures or other public figures, alive or dead
  
• mysterious "in-jokes"
• confessions of idolatry of a specific celebrity
• requests for advice
• random, on-the-fly "let's get together "
• comments on "current events"
• mini venting sessions
• sharing about cool new products (aka, mini infomercials)
  
• arrangements for flash mobs or other events
• assessments on whether it was a good\bad\mediocre day
• humorous observations on the inanity of humanity
• a sentence or two just to show how clever we are.

these status updates can give us insights into people's lives that we wouldn't have experienced otherwise. getting insight into other people's lives can help us gain insight into our own lives.

in a nutshell, i would maintain that fb is a virtual social interface that can potentially enrich our lives; but that it all depends on how we interface with it. How frequently do we use it? Is it interfering with our "real world" interfacing with actual "live" humans? To what extent do we take it seriously? Are we highly sensitive and susceptible to misinterpreting innocuous comments? (For example, i was not offended when one of my "friends" decided to "unfriend" me when i posted a comment about the book "Go the fuck to sleep.")

fb is what it is because of what each person makes of it.