Web 2.0 suicide
“Unfriend” became Oxford’s Word of the Year 2009, and over the last week I can confirm many of my social network contacts have encountered virtual dilemmas, aware or not of Oxford’s choice. The trend dilemma seems to be:
- “I add someone as a friend” or “I confirm someone as a friend” (both, then, beeing active decisions).
- I feel annoyed by the fact that this people I now consider “friends” are not giving me as much feedback as they would in real life.
- Taking advantage of the pretended distance Internet gives, and the possibility to communicate massive messages, I post an incendiary status update threatening silent people in my news feed with a determined will to delete all those contacts that appear to be just watching my conversations instead of participating on them.
In my opinion, we haven’t had the time to think which use we want to give to, let’s say, Facebook. We love having lot’s of friends and being able to communicate with all of them easily, even to distribute an ideal self through tagged pictures and cool statuses. Most don’t master the art of privacy and ignore lists of friends related to a specific limited profile. We get to the point in which we believe people only add or accept us as friends in order to broaden the list.
Does it really matter? For me, what’s important is the connections you establish and how much access you give to them. A social network is not real life, and for instance, I don’t accept people I don’t know (in real of virtual life). I don’t have the need to talk to all of them, but the value for me is being able to easily contact them if I feel like it, or just be in the know. Of course one can choose to have a really closed and elitist network of real life close friends, but in my opinion that’s not Facebook in it’s full potential.
All those who get too much trouble with virtual dilemmas, can always commit virtual suicide and disappear completely from Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Twitter. Grab the Ethernet rope an voilà! Disconnected.
