My Relationship with Facebook: Can We Talk?

by Karri Flatla

I'm probably going to lose a lot of Friends with this post, but I need to get some stuff off my chest about Facebook. If you're a real Friend, you'll listen without judgment. If not, it was nice Facebooking with you. I hope there are no hard feelings left in my wake.

Like most of us, my love affair with Facebook started out hot 'n heavy. Almost daily (sometimes even hourly), I watched my Friend meter go up like an investor watches a stock ticker. And the sheer voyeurism of it all was just so hard to resist. (Admit it, you've looked up at least one ex just to see their profile picture or better yet, get access to their photo album. And you couldn't help but smile to yourself when you noticed their Freshman 15 had turned into the Desk Jockey 30.)

Now, the relationship is starting to bore me and I don't know what to do about it. In addition to the boredom (I'm running out of people to spy on, er, I mean beFriend), I find myself feeling rather annoyed. Often. Yet I don't want to break up with Facebook either. I just want to keep Facey-Face around for those Friday nights when I want to be amused.

While I'm at it, know what annoys me the most about FF? The constant nattering when I don't feel like talking. Only a few of my Friends do it, but they're kind of ruining it for my BFFs. Specifically, it's the constant influx of emails that is making me want to start deFriending like a highschool cheerleader with PMS. I'm not talking about FunWall notifications either. I turned those off when I became afraid my hard drive was going to crash from Fun overload. But seriously, where does it say in the Facebook Terms of Use that it may be used as a list management tool? Where and when did I give permission to my Friends to use me this way?

In fact, Facebook's Terms of Use say this:

"... you agree not to use the Service or the Site to: harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications ..."

So, you can't harvest emails from your Friends' profiles to market to them, but what about the Invite Your Friends feature? And how come it allows you to "Import Email Addresses" from various sources? Seems that Facey-Face has developed a split personality. Or an inflated ego.

This relationship is getting complicated. So many rules--written and unwritten--have been broken. I don't want to sound like an ingrate. Facey-Face has been good to me. We go back at least a few months. The tapestry of our affair is richly decorated.

Decorated with smileys. And hugs. And dirty video clips. And spam.

I just wanted to hook up with some old friends. Do a little B2B networking. And exchange some niceties now and then.

Facebook, you let me down. And I don't know what to do about it.

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