Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Lent, Second Edition


During Lent, 2011, Hubby and I gave up facebook. It wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. We didn't even cheat on Sundays. At least he didn't. I did on the third Sunday. We had time on our hands. We had to communicate the old fashioned way!


Then Easter Sunday came and went. I was perusing facebook that night and I was enjoying some pictures that "friends" had posted. I noticed one particular picture that someone had posted of the inside of their church from that morning. It was exquisite. It had beautiful woodwork and it was traditional to the bones. So, I "liked" the picture and asked if it was in the same city in which he lived. This guys response was, "Try xxxxx". Really? How in the world am I supposed to know? I'm glad I'm happy at the church we attend. That would have been a great opportunity to share his church home with others. I "unliked" the photo and deleted my comment. Whatever.


Maybe my response was extreme. But, I'm not sure that his response could have been taken in any other way. If so, oh well.


While we were abstaining from facebook during Lent, Hubby and I had discussed continuing not to participate. Either we would only look on Sundays or just delete our accounts altogether. Of course deleting our accounts altogether would be easy since we hadn't been that much into it during the Lenten season. But, I felt a tug. Delete my account? Take a breath, it will be okay.


Then we watched a show on one of the cable news networks called, "The Facebook Obsession". It highlighted the start of facebook and some of the ups and downs along the way. It all started in a dorm room at Harvard by Mark Zuckerberg. His original concept was called "facemash", where he had input Harvard students pictures on the web site and he asked for people to vote on the prettiest/ugliest students. Sounds lovely, huh? It was quickly taken down.


The Facebook Obsession highlighted a reunion story of an adult woman looking for her birth mother. I guess that's okay when both want to be found. They also brought attention to police departments who had captured criminals through the web site. Yeah for criminals being captured! One woman that the show featured was employed as a school principal. She was fired after her "private" rants about the students were seen as inappropriate. The principal had blamed facebook for her firing. I don't blame facebook, facebook didn't make her put those things on her wall. She did.


Our privacy on the site is constantly being sacrificed. The site is constantly making changes, but those changes aren't made very well known unless someone gets a hold of it and spreads the word. Even though I think my wall is private, it's not. As the show continued, I think it made it a little easier for us to stomach deleting our accounts. First we have to go in and delete our photos one by one. Joy.


The producers of the show requested an interview with Zuckerberg, but their request was denied. They were referred to the facebook's privacy page on the site.


The show also aired a partial interview by Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal. She sat down with Zuckerberg for an interview and some of the questions weren't even that hard hitting, but he was sweating profusely. Some have called it, his "Nixon moment". This socially awkward young adult who started the biggest social network there is to date.


Don't get me wrong, this isn't an attack on anyone who chooses to participate on facebook. It's just that we are finding it easier not to. Come Friday, we will start to delete the pictures one by one on our pages and say good-bye.


The Facebook Obsession

1 comment:

  1. Why do you have to delete all of your photos one by one?!

    ReplyDelete