Facebook over-over-analyzed

-A Twitter correspondant of a writer I met on the Internet before in person (how's that for bloggy?) interpreted my post about Facebook-unique neurosis to mean that people "struggle" from the pain of seeing near-strangers hanging out without them, after calling it a "sad predicament." The trouble with all writing, bloggy included, is that often one means one thing, but is read as meaning something else. What I'd intended as a light-hearted observation about how social media changes our interpretation of our social circles was read as something like a cry for help. I was kind of stunned that it was read this way, especially given the paragraph at the end about the be-a-grown-up approach to these feelings, but it was.

So, to be absolutely, abundantly clear, to readers with and without a self-deprecating bent, what I'm referring to isn't crippling depression or full-on deluded narcissism. Rather, I'm talking about the more everyday experience of feeling as though you've just hung out with someone you last saw six years prior because you've been getting updates about them, from them, continuously for years. If you don't experience this, more power to you, but if you do, I suspect in most cases, you'll be just fine.

-I think I've figured out, thanks to Miss Self-Important's comments, where it is that Amber and I disagree re: whether it is (says Amber) or is not (says WWPD) awful for women to put photos of their babies up as profile pics on Facebook. And it ultimately has nothing to do with feminism. Basically, if I see that someone only uses Facebook to highlight one aspect of their identity, I don't assume that they have, in life, shed everything else. Or, rather, I might assume this, but I know intellectually that this assumption is probably incorrect, and that this is an impulse I should reject.

This is, however, yet another way social media distort experience. If - and this gets at MSI's point - someone has a blog entirely devoted to an interest, professional or amateur, readers don't assume this is the person. Whereas with Facebook, yup, people do feel as though what they're getting the full story. One can have a blog about something. But a Facebook profile is about you.

But some of us don't fill out our entire profiles, don't use the site for every possible purpose (friend-updates, family-updates, interesting-article-links, professional-networking, romantic-pursuit...), either because we can't be bothered or because we don't want whichever information online. We shouldn't assume that someone who doesn't list or mention hobbies doesn't have any, that someone who doesn't list favorite books is a philistine, that someone with no relationship listed is or is not single, and so on.

So, back to the babies. Someone with a baby might feel as if they owe family and friends updates/photos, but may not have the time (b/c busy with baby, or just generally busy) or inclination to update about whatever else may still be going on in their lives. Obviously it's something else if - as Caryatis's acquaintance did - someone turns an entire profile into an OMG-I'm-a-mom extravaganza. But that, I think, would be the exception.