Socially mediated

More, perhaps, than any other service I use regularly, it seems important to keep thinking about Facebook.  The terms and conditions are many, near-labyrinthine indeed, and the way in which the service attracts people from so many facets of each person’s life also requires thought in terms of how I interact with it all.

There is of course a precedent in this country, and that’s Old Friends, the Fairfax-owned site to which more or less everyone, even my contact-wary señor, seems to belong.  Many of the friends from school by whom I’ve been contacted on Facebook I’d previously been in touch with on Old Friends.

But Facebook is in close-to-real-time and demands a greater self-awareness, remembering just by whom your online murmurings are going to be read.  For a long time I kept my presence there limited, but since my decision to embrace internet Glasnost I’ve let my circle expand, making contact with former students, family and now even classmates whom I’ve not seen for a significant number of years.

Such a network demands to my mind a certain evenness, indeed blandness, of tone, but this is not too difficult for me, another facet of the writing that I practice as my craft, and thus far the rewards of keeping in touch outweigh any potential disadvantages.  It helps, I think, that I’ve made my peace with any difficulties of the distant past.  There’s almost no-one against whom I hold a lasting grudge, and even people who might fall into this category are unlikely to send me a cheery hello on the internet.

None of this, however, solves the problem of the potential time-sink, or the way in which data, once entered into the service, is so difficult to remove permanently.  One sensible way around this is to rationalise, ruthlessly, as MTNW vows to do:

I haven’t been feeling tremendously inspired to blog recently. I am even less inspired by Facebook and I have decided that I won’t be spending too much time there now from now on (as discussed here at Emily’s). The people that I primarily interact with on Facebook are actually the people I mostly interact with online through blogs and twitter anyway so not much significant change there really.

Emily, therelinked, draws parallels between the past and present, arguing that

there’s a reason we lose touch with some of the people we do during a lifetime … Then it hits you, and you find yourself thinking, “What the hell am I doing? I don’t want that person reading that it’s Friday night at 10:05 p.m., and all my update says is, ‘Emily is headed for bed after a cup of tea and the crossword puzzle.’”

And with self-consciousness, and the desire not to leave a poor impression on others, comes the end of the desire to continue.

These feelings are palpable, and part, I think, of the paranoia that so easily arises when our memories of the past meet the hyper-awareness of online environments.  Is there any way around it that doesn’t involve quitting, for those of us who would like to keep more than a toe dipped in this particular social-media pool?

I have at present a via media that works for me, in which I combine my online activity with a certain amount of social masking, not to mention protection of my content.  Very little of what I put on Facebook is not imported from or stored somewhere else.  A few photos have no other online location, but these are there for their intended audience and are backed up offline with my other images here at home.  I keep my status updates short (for a given value of short) and not too idiosyncratic so that those who are interested can know what I’m doing without being led too far into question-land.

If Facebook friends do want to read more about me, these posts are imported to my notes, but their length also acts as a disincentive for friends just passing through.  Save the games that I play (which again could be played on their home sites if I were really in need), the other information provided on my wall is syndicated from my other online homes (all of which are linked both from these pages and at Dandy ID).  This, I hope, lets people know what I’m reading, enjoying, thinking and doing online without demanding additional labour on my part.  So long as I check into the news feed and reply to messages and wall posts, my wall feed ticks away on its own.  (Using Twitter to update Facebook statuses works similarly, but I prefer to play with language a bit more on Twitter and therefore keep it separate.)

What this means, I tentatively hope, is that if for some reason my account is pulled*, or the content and I separated some other way, I won’t feel I’ve lost a substantive wedge of my online presence, and all the while can contribute to the general chatter without disappearing for extended periods into the great time sink of doom.

*“We may terminate your account on the Facebook Service, delete your profile and any User Content you have Posted on or through the Facebook Service, and/or prohibit you from using or accessing the Facebook Service (or any portion thereof) for any or no reason, at any time in our sole discretion, with or without notice. Further, we reserve the right to change any aspect or feature of the Facebook Service at any time without notice.“

Tagged as: Facebook