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Lisa Earle McLeod is quickly learning the ropes in the uncharted land of social networking. Cyber-reality, in essence, is not that different from real life in that many ways. That is, if you think like a junior in high school. There are still cliques. And kids are still too embarrassed to acknowledge the so much as the existence of parents. There are still relationships to made, broken, and rekindled. In her April 11, 2009 article in the Huffington Post, entitled “Why I’m Un-friending My Husband on Facebook”, Lisa explains her reasons for her brutal banishment of her beloved from her list of Friends on Facebook.

Social politics has gone high-tech. Rather than telling everyone at school how bad she hates the head cheerleader, the goth queen can now tell anyone with a mountain high enough to catch a wi-fi signal. Apparently, remembering how to act like a teenager is like remembering how to ride a bike. A man used to be measured by his character, now he is measured by his friend count on his favorite social networking site. To be “un-friended” is as mortifying as being removed from the cell phone contacts.

Lisa goes on to explain after being shunned on Facebook by her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friends, she decided that she needed to drop some of her own social dead weight, so she “un-friended” her husband, ostensibly because he is a bigger dork than she is, with a dubious past as a math geek. She points out her husband has even fewer “friends” than she does, necessitating her booting her husband in order to save her own social hide. Her witty response to her daughter’s ostracism is a parody of the angst-filled emotions teenagers go through on a daily basis. Rest assured, Lisa is not the first unfortunate person to feel lost in the new New World.

The explosion of the popularity of social networking sites has added a rather unique element to the art of working the social scene. Just as removing someone from your cyber-life is as easy as the click of a mouse, “re-friending” them is not any more difficult. “Eating crow” is even easier these days, as it can be done by simply sending someone a friend request. Even our common vernacular is being gradually enhanced by such eloquence as “un-friend”, “re-friend” and even “friending”.

Satirical though her article may be, Lisa unwittingly points to a change in the attitudes towards friendships and relationships in general. The Internet has made everything temporal. Everything is disposable. Friends don’t lose touch, they become obsolete . Ending a relationship is a simple as “blocking them”. There are millions of people waiting to take the place of the person you just exiled. Fast friendships come and go with the click of the mouse.

Even amidst the hubbub of the social networking, some things never change. People are still people, no matter what form of media they use to communicate. Chances are, Lisa’s husband will not break up with her at lunch for her transgression, and her daughter will one day again acknowledge her progenator’s role in her life. For now, Lisa will have to just deal with it like every other parent does, LOL. Most likely she and her daughter will again be BFF, and they will look back and laugh at the silly things teenagers do. OMG. Gotta go. My BFF is IMing me about the homecoming queen’s gross new profile pic. TTYL.

Image sxc/spekulator, cyberlearning-world.com

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