Faceache

My generation came at a bit of an odd time. When we were born, mobile phones weren’t owned by six year olds, everyone used Walkmans instead of iPods, and HDTV didn’t exist yet. These things came later, so we get to use all this exciting new technology, but with the benefit of being able to bore any future children of what life was like without digital cameras.

One day, we’ll tell them that we had to organise meeting up with our friends with a landline, or, gasp, face to face! As a friend once said, as a kid, if you wanted to meet up with a friend, you had to agree a time and place with them in advance. If you turned up and they weren’t there, you couldn’t ring them up on your mobile to find out where they were, you just had to go home!

Nowadays though, I couldn’t organise any kind of knees up without Facebook. It’s the one site that has every single person you know on it. (My parents aren’t on Twitter yet, and hopefully it’ll stay that way). It’s the easiest way of reaching out to a large group of people at once, and because everyone can see everything in the feed, it makes organising an event much easier. In theory anyway. Me and the concept of organisation don’t so much disagree as have epic battles every time we meet.

I know that ‘The Horrors of Facebook’ is not a new topic by any means, but I just have to stick my nose in. On the whole, I like it, because it’s a great way of staying in contact with my friends. The problem is, though, is that you have to be so careful about what you put on it these days.

Luckily, back when I worked with children in 2007 I set all my privacy settings to private. No one can get a look at my page without adding me as a friend, which I won’t’ do unless I know you. That’s ok, right?

Well, it was. The thing is, I’ve met a lot of people over the years. Old workmates, school friends, and so on. The thing is, it’s not just them I add now. Since joining a roller derby league, I’ve added every member who’s contacted me. Looking in my friends list, I can see there’s 46 of them. 46! Plus there’s family, and not just my own family, but Sunday Matt’s family too. I’ve got 12 members of my own and 11 of his. It’s crazy.

I used to be able to post whatever I wanted to when I set my Facebook up, without fear of who might see it. This was before my parents and children discovered it. Nowadays, I have to control everything I post to the tiniest detail. A friend showed me how to tailor your settings for every post, so you can block certain people seeing what you’ve written, but bloody hell, it’s such a faff!

I have to do it though. I have a couple of kids on my friends list (Sunday Matt’s nieces, mostly) and so I’m very careful now about what I say. Plus, my parents are on it now. My mum refused to add me, which I’m forever grateful for, but my dad did. And he soon found a video from a house party I had when I was living with him, that he didn’t know about. Oops. A ton of fiddly settings later, he can’t see anything but my profile picture.

But why should I have to do this? If I know someone, I can’t ignore their friend request. But when family and kids get involved, it gets stupidly complicated. I just want to use Facebook to shout nonsense at my friends and plan nights out. I shouldn’t have to treat everything I post as a secret that only a select few can see!

It’s getting old. Luckily, however, I have a private Twitter account (not the one in the sidebar) that I use where I can swear freely and let off steam without offending anyone. Well, less people than on Facebook. Just no one tell my dad about it, ok?