jim halpert: yes, i am the popular social networking site known as bookface.
so, i'm not sure if you've heard of this phenomenon sweeping the nation, but it's called facebook. oh, you have heard of it? you have your own page? you check the site every couple of hours to see what witty new comments one of your friends might have made? to add expositions of your own? do you think about it when you're away from a computer? longing to log in and check what's going on? to see who has newly befriended who or to note who else is logged on for an 'instant chat'. oh sure, you act nonchalant while you're away from the site, but inside, you're counting the minutes until you can get back there. sometimes, you don't even realize you've logged on until you're there, halfway through the last fifteen minute's banter. you think you can stop anytime, but you can't. and the truth is, you don't want to.
i'm not judging, i'm one of you! just tonight, i was struck again by the pull of this website. in between vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms, cooking dinner (ok, reheating leftovers) and reading for school, i kept coming back to my laptop and hitting f5 to refresh the screen and see if there was any new news.
i didn't used to be this way. up until a couple of months ago, i logged on to facebook about once every three months. but then i started making friends here in madison and i started getting 'friend requests'. i logged on and accepted the requests. for those of you who don't know (which is probably none of you), this is how the whole networking thing works: when joe becomes friends with jane, his page notifies the world that 'joe is now friends with jane'. all of joe's current friends see this new friendship and those who know jane and are not current facebook friends with jane send jane friend requests. this chain of event continues until jane has six thousand friends, making jane feel very popular. jane, i mean, i added four new friends, just today.
and so the madness continues. with an increase in friends comes an increase in notifications - every time one of your friends updates his/her page, comments on your 'wall', is looking for a farm animal, becomes friends with someone new, sends you a message, gets tagged in a photo, etc., you receive a notification (case in point: i just found out my sister is attending a lia sophia jewelry party). if you have a blackberry like me, or some other type of smartphone, your phone doesn't stop vibrating or ding-donging (onomatopoeia!) all day. as an added bonus, facebook allows you to poke people whenever you want. really! i've never done it, but there it is, a 'poke' button. 'poke kristin', 'poke john', 'poke rachel'. poke poke poke. am i the only one who thinks that's weird?
in case any of this sounds negative, i think facebook is great. it's a quick and easy way to stay in touch with everyone you know and have ever known and everyone they have ever known and, let's not forget, there's always the option to poke one another.
so, i'm not sure if you've heard of this phenomenon sweeping the nation, but it's called facebook. oh, you have heard of it? you have your own page? you check the site every couple of hours to see what witty new comments one of your friends might have made? to add expositions of your own? do you think about it when you're away from a computer? longing to log in and check what's going on? to see who has newly befriended who or to note who else is logged on for an 'instant chat'. oh sure, you act nonchalant while you're away from the site, but inside, you're counting the minutes until you can get back there. sometimes, you don't even realize you've logged on until you're there, halfway through the last fifteen minute's banter. you think you can stop anytime, but you can't. and the truth is, you don't want to.
i'm not judging, i'm one of you! just tonight, i was struck again by the pull of this website. in between vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms, cooking dinner (ok, reheating leftovers) and reading for school, i kept coming back to my laptop and hitting f5 to refresh the screen and see if there was any new news.
i didn't used to be this way. up until a couple of months ago, i logged on to facebook about once every three months. but then i started making friends here in madison and i started getting 'friend requests'. i logged on and accepted the requests. for those of you who don't know (which is probably none of you), this is how the whole networking thing works: when joe becomes friends with jane, his page notifies the world that 'joe is now friends with jane'. all of joe's current friends see this new friendship and those who know jane and are not current facebook friends with jane send jane friend requests. this chain of event continues until jane has six thousand friends, making jane feel very popular. jane, i mean, i added four new friends, just today.
and so the madness continues. with an increase in friends comes an increase in notifications - every time one of your friends updates his/her page, comments on your 'wall', is looking for a farm animal, becomes friends with someone new, sends you a message, gets tagged in a photo, etc., you receive a notification (case in point: i just found out my sister is attending a lia sophia jewelry party). if you have a blackberry like me, or some other type of smartphone, your phone doesn't stop vibrating or ding-donging (onomatopoeia!) all day. as an added bonus, facebook allows you to poke people whenever you want. really! i've never done it, but there it is, a 'poke' button. 'poke kristin', 'poke john', 'poke rachel'. poke poke poke. am i the only one who thinks that's weird?
in case any of this sounds negative, i think facebook is great. it's a quick and easy way to stay in touch with everyone you know and have ever known and everyone they have ever known and, let's not forget, there's always the option to poke one another.
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