Facebook has been a part of my vocabulary and my life for just about the past year. I’ve learned so much from it, many things I didn’t know I needed to know. I’ve learned how to ‘friend’. I’ve learned how to ‘ignore’. And I’ve learned what it feels like to be ‘unfriended’. According to my grammar check, I’m not using those words right, but have I got news for my grammar check! Not only am I using them correctly in this blog, I’ve learned how to do them correctly on Facebook! Well, almost . . .
I first heard of Facebook when my brother sent me an email that said, “I found Shelley on Facebook, you should reconnect with her!” I didn’t know what Facebook was but, since he’s my younger brother and technically I should be smarter than him, I pretended to know what he was talking about. So I googled Facebook and checked Snopes.com for the scam-factor, then signed up for it and off I went.
I read up on what you should and should not do on Facebook, especially if you have a public profile. I found webpage after webpage on what you shouldn’t post: underage drinking, where the next party is, inappropriate pictures or anything negative about my job or the people I work with or my in-laws. What I couldn’t find, however, is how you should do things. Had I found that, I might not have made some critical Facebook errors.
One of the first connections/mistakes I made was through a WMU alumni group. I found someone I went to college with and sent him a ‘friend’ request. He accepted, made pleasantries, then weeks went by and I hadn’t heard from him or get any more updates. That is when I learned that I had been ‘unfriended’. Initially, it hurt my feelings, but seriously, we hadn’t communicated in the past 20 years and had one class together in college, so what did I expect? It’s no different than running into someone you haven’t seen awhile and saying, ‘let’s get together soon’ and then he/she doesn’t call. My semi-faux pas? ‘Friending’ someone who I could have just sent a note to. That way, if he had an interest in ‘friending’ me, he could have done so. At least he would have known I was interested, right? Do I even really care? 20 years later? Not really, but I am still talking about it, so maybe?
Another possible faux pas I made on Facebook was deleting a comment that someone had made to my ‘status update’. Well, I didn’t think it was a ‘faux pas’, but apparently I should only delete if it’s offensive or bordering on illegal? I’m not a negative person and the comment was really negative and altered the whole tone of my status update. And since it is MY update, I can make that call, right?
I haven’t figured this one out yet, but do my husband and I have to ‘friend’ all the same people? Just because he is friends with someone we both know, does that mean I have to ‘friend’ them too? If I ‘ignore’ one of his relatives ‘friend’ requests, am I committing a major faux pas? In my world . . . well, I haven’t decided yet.
I’ll just sit on this one and continue to read other blogs until I find out.