Facebook is eating me alive!

This was an old post I did for our class on Social-Networking a little while back. It's kinda funny how Facebook and its similar genres changed the lives of people around the world, and yet here I smirk and imagine the faces of 500 million users of Facebook, just as Mark Zuckerberg presses the SHUTDOWN button. Evil me. :D

Everyone aboard the “social” bandwagon are required to at least know of the popular social networking and blogging sites like FaceBook, Multiply, MySpace, Twitter and Friendster, just to name a few. To them, it’s already a way of life, something to augment their daily existence, something to spice it up – albeit the consequences it could bring.

It may be fun for you and me at the alpha-stage of our “social-networking” stage, with all the status updates like what’s on the minds of our friends, what do our friends think of us via testimonials, what are their thoughts about our blog. Yes, we want to know. It’s human to err, and it’s also human to thirst for knowledge, nonetheless our unending search for it.

Does it not make you curious whether or not your crush likes you the same way you do?

What’s the latest gigs your favorite bands have to offer?

Who was that girl I met at the party?

Bombarded by questions, yet answers could always lie in the internet. You could always try asking Google for answers, but I don’t think it’d give you the answers you’d want. Heck, that’s not enough – mind you. It searches for definite things, not things we barely know of its existence.

‘Nuff said, the whole paragraph summarizes to the internet as an endless plethora of knowledge, and social-networks amps your virtual experiences up. Let’s be honest, who can’t live without ‘em? I can’t.

Now unto the darker side of things. Social-Networking is a drug. Constant usage, then turning into an addiction; may it be the applications that keeps you going or it’s the status of your friends that keep you pushing the refresh button. Have you the guts to overcome an addiction nearly 500 million people haven’t gotten over? That’d be something of a marvel.

Oh guess what, I can call your cellphone now. Thanks for supplying your personal info in your social page. I also know where you live. Oh, and in case I don’t see you, I could always ask anyone in your naive little family. Now ain’t that a bummer, you’ve got nowhere to run thanks your “social-networking” page. And may I also complement you for being such a wonderful prey to stalk.

Stalking isn’t a rarity these days, no one has to get the binoculars out just so someone could see some skin (forgive me for the words I used, I couldn’t find anything else befitting the situation at hand). It’s not the stalkers fault if the user hasn’t learned how to set things to “private”.
On lighter terms, we’d like to call it “public profiling”, viewing only the things the users have set to public, admiration over the person would most likely prevail. Why would some people stalk at someone’s profile, befriend and get to know them better? Because the victim has left themselves vulnerable and open in the first place; that my friends, is either stupidity, carelessness or both.

I’ve nothing else to add nor to say, and I’ve also passed through the 350 words mark. But before I bid you my dear readers adieu, I’d like to impart a few words of care.
The information superhighway has limitless possibilities, possibilities that could make you or break you. Take things into careful consideration, because everything can “virtually” happen.