Sunday, April 12, 2009

Facebook is so weird. Not that I'm judging.

I've seen pictures of old friends, posted on Facebook, that make me feel as if I've walked in on them having sex and then turned around, only to find the door locked behind me and to then discover that they don't care that I'm in there and are continuing with their...machinations.

I guess that's a rather long metaphor, but the pictures are just so unabashed, so "out there" that the only choice one has is to start making pop psychology diagnoses. At least that's what I do.

"She has always used her relationships with men to validate herself, so therefore she is posting these pictures of herself in these blatantly sexual positions in order to appear more attractive in the eyes of others. What she doesn't realise is how transparent this is and also, how quickly she needs to get herself into therapy."

One picture in particular, the person looks like they are being date raped. Date raped.

In addition to inappropriate pictures, there are jokes occasionally made on peoples posts that I think are childish, inappropriate and rude. A (straight) male friend changed his relationship status and it was met with, "Can't wait to meet him" and "What's his name?" jokes.

This is a funny place for me to be in. I am far from prudish and certainly far from anyone who gets offended by pretty much anything -I do have my fair share of somewhat scandalous pictures posted up on Facebook. I'm not particularly fond of political correctness (don't get me drunk and started on cultural relativism. Or Garrison Keillor, for that matter). It is just weird to want other people to see a lot of this stuff. Or know about it.

Maybe it's not them, it's me. Maybe I'm showing my age - I feel like I missed the everyone-knows-everything-about-you-in-digital generation by a couple of years. Young enough to know what it is, too old not to be horrified or totally grossed out. I mean, no one even had a cell phone when I was in high school until my senior year and even then, it was a rarity.

*******

2 comments:

Shawn said...

I'm with you on this. I used to post every picture of every event I ever attended, but now, I've avoided posting any but the most banal stuff recently, if at all.

Miss Bee said...

It must be me then, too - I'm an old biddy, apparently. Oh well!