Going public while saving the world (or how Facebook has changed the way we relate to the world)

Facebook…

What can one say about it? It has brought us nice moments, such as meeting up with old friends and… well, that’s pretty much all the good stuff about it…

There is something to it that makes it be quite addictive to some people. I have found myself clicking on facebook more than once a day at some point, which after a while clearly became a sad thing to do (so I stopped, yes).

We have all heard others talking about how it is not so safe, and how people can see every single thing you do… in other words, it is no news that it is the haven of stalkers, broken hearts, loners, etc…

But let’s be honest, you can edit your privacy settings and keep your private stuff private. Yet, many people choose not to do so. They choose to post every single emotion they go through… they choose to share with us every time they are in a “complicated relationship” with someone, or whether they got married, or engaged, or they broke up and so on… That’s OK. I mean, it’s your life, right? But why does it have to show up in my feeds when I go on facebook?

I’ve talked about this with Euri in the past, and after chatting with Felix today, we reflected on how FB (to us, at least) has created a parallel reality… things suddenly become easier, but not necessarily true. In a very personal level, you can just create a fake life with fake friends and post about it for all your high school classmates to read about it and be jealous (or not). But it seems that you can also support the monks in Burma or stop the genocide in Darfur or fight AIDS just by joining a FB group. What does it take? A single click, and you join some other 100000 members that are doing something (??) to save the world from evil. Maybe (probably) I am being too critical, but it all looks to simplistic and comfortable to me. What part of all this is real? What part of these uncountable daily clicks make an actual difference? And if they do, is that the way we want to engage with others? By “clicking”..?

To finish up, I wanted to post a little something that Felix and I came up with. He’ll probably do a better one, but I was anxious enough to attempt my own… what do you think about it?