Mar 03 2009
2 Degrees of Separation
DC is TINY. No place is this more evident than on Facebook. Facebook is NOT the place to reinvent yourself. Facebook is not the new college.
Think about it, if & when you went away to college, you had the opportunity to be a whole other person if you wanted to. You could shake the nerdy image and become a goth, or you could shake the slutty image and become a good girl. Facebook is NOT the place for that.
Why?
Because there are people on Facebook that remember the nerd, the goth, the slut, the good girl. There are people that know you from different times in your life and they know other people from other times in your life; thereby, introducing 2 Degrees of Separation.
Your classmate from English 101 who knows you as the coolest girl on campus, may know the college sweetheart of the guy who sat next to you in 8th grade when you accidentally wet your pants. Therefore, you have to make sure you don’t get too high and mighty on your Facebook page. Someone may be there to bring you down a peg or two!
One day, you are sitting at your desk meditating and centering your chi and you get a message that someone has “tagged” you in a photo. You click the link & there you are scantily clad and passed out drunk in a dumpster just this past weekend. I certainly hope your new friends in theFacebook Meditation Group don’t think that you are all Chi all the time because that is who you have portrayed yourself to be on the internet. When in actuality you like to party on the weekends AND center your Chi during the week! It’s ok!
No need to hide or be ashamed of who you are just to win new internet friends because your old real life friends likely know at least ONE of your new Facebook friends. Change is good, it is after all the theme of the new administration. Just make sure you really are representing the WHOLE you. I will start: Hi, I like to go out with my friends every now & then and have a glass of wine or 2 at a bar. But I also sing in my church choir and hope to volunteer with underprivileged teens. Does that make me a bad person? Nope. It makes me a HUMAN. Embrace who you are & don’t forget it, because 11 times out of 10 there will be someone on Facebook to REMIND YOU!
