Thursday, 18 June 2009

• Why Facebook Should Be Segregated

  I remember back in the day when Facebook was just a futuristic web contraption designed to let you hunt down the ladies you met the night before whose names you couldn't remember. It was an easier time then. You could browse the fellow students in your classes. You could put your pictures up and never fear the wrong folks'd see 'em. It was designed by college students for college students to connect with other college students at the colleges they went to and even the colleges they didn't.
  
  When I was in high school, Facebook was one of the few lights at the end of a long and miserable tunnel; the minute you accepted that high school diploma, you were handed a college email address, which in those days was the requirement for joining. Facebook was a rite of passage, something that a pizza-faced high school freshman could never understand. If high schoolers wanted a social networking site they could have easily joined myspace: all the pedophiles did!
  
  

  
  

  Exhibit A
  

  
  
  Then came High School Facebook. Hell hath no fury like my own against High School Facebook, or HSFB as it may have been called at one point. At first we were told that HSFB would never, ever bleed into the original. We allowed Mark Zuckerberg and his minions to expand their business because we trusted them. We were all of us deceived.
  
  Suddenly I was being "Friended" by the little brats whose only interaction with me had been a "Scram!" or a "Get lost, ya ruffian!" I knew that these children would never intend to actually be friends with me; they simply sought acknowledgment from an elder, in this case one who had graduated from his alma mater with the reputation of being a bad ass: moi.
  
  

  
  

  I took my dog and a sawed-off to Senior Prom.
  

  
  So I was Friends with some little redheaded kid I'd kicked the crap out of in high school. All he wanted was my approval, not my attention. A few days later and I was friends with nearly as many people I didn't know as those I did. No big deal, I guess. Let the little bastards see all the pictures of me doing the stuff they wished they could be doing. You know. Mature stuff that adults do. Like keg stands and beer bongs.
  
  And then Mark Zuckerberg (more like Mark Suckerberg!) pulled another fast one on us. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can now create a Facebook account. I know this because my father is on it. My father who doesn't believe in mousepads, who has never successfully navigated OnDemand cable, who is OLD AS ALL HELL, is on Facebook. Don't get me wrong, I love my father. He is a wonderful, kind man, and incredibly smart as well. I would trust him with anything important. But Facebook is not important, Dad. You're not missing anything, I promise!
  
  That's the point I've been trying to get at throughout this whole post: Facebook isn't important! It is a great place to keep up with friends and meet new ones. But parents, politicians, recruiters: stay out.
  
  

  
  

  "Am I Tweeting yet?! Am I?!"
  

  
  You're told that if you use anything less than the strictest security settings you will be putting your future in jeopardy. Not only are we losing access to many of the memories we've made throughout college--any picture of you at a party or holding a drink can be used against you--but we are also losing a tremendous amount of self-expression. The programmers at Facebook, all young people like us, have sacrificed privacy and trust in the name of expanding their empire, pushing for more and more ad revenues via applications, company pages, and the like.
  
  

  
  

  "I just sold your privacy on eBay!"
  

  
  Facebook was once a means of embracing the newfound independence and self-expression found upon graduating high school and moving out of your parent's house. Now it's become a hiring pool, crippling that independence as a means of preparing us for the workforce before we've even joined it. The person I am on Facebook, ostensibly a place to meet people and keep up with friends, should never have to be the person I am in an interview. Neither instance is the real me, but both are ways that I present myself to different groups of people. Even that red-headed punk from my high school knows: being my Friend doesn't make you my friend.
  
  We are all met with a dilemma. The easiest solution would be for me to delete Facebook. But the sad reality is that I, like many of us, am totally dependent on it. Without Facebook around I'd forget my friends' birthdays, their phone numbers and email addresses. I'd lose hundreds of memories, represented by the pictures posted of me during college.
  
  I'm not asking for adults to get off, either. I just don't understand why we all have to use the same Facebook? If Mark Zuckerberg had kept his promise about the separation between Facebooks, our parents could use it to connect with their high school and college friends without being able to monitor us--which they do, whether or not they intend to.
  
  That's why Facebook should be segregated. There, I said it. High School Facebook should not be integrated into College Facebook which should never be integrated with whatever comes after college. Old People Facebook. My advice to you, Mark Zuckerberg, is to divide up your empire before it collapses from utter suckitude.
  

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