Everybody's Doing It

I'm being peer-pressured.

Okay, so I can totally understand why Facebook is such a great thing. You can find old friends, keep in touch with new friends, chat, blog, evite, yada yada yada. I've already been invited by people I haven't seen or heard from in ages, and I've been given the promotional speech by at least three close friends. But I'm still resisting.

I've thought about all the member services I've joined in order to be connected to people. ICQ was the first, and at the time that was greatest. Everyone was on ICQ, even my father. My friends and I would ICQ each other even when we were sitting side by side in the computer lab. Maybe the "uh-oh!" was a sign.

Then MSN came along. And I thought, why do I need MSN? ICQ works just fine. But as fewer and fewer people logged onto ICQ, I was eventually forced to move on and get an MSN name, just to continue talking to my friends.

I'm proud to say that I never joined Asian Avenue. That would have been a bit too much. I never really understood MySpace either. But I did join Friendster, which was pretty similar in concept to Six Degrees. I still log on from time to time, and I've had some strange guys contact me, which was...interesting. But it seems like the appeal of Friendster is also waning.

So now here's Facebook, yet another portal that asks for my personal info and needs me to come up with a password. Here's what gets me: all the people who have talked to me about Facebook have said the same thing - the other day they found someone (or were found by someone) they haven't talked to in years. They just showed up and started talking. I have nothing against that, it's just that this means anyone and everyone can find you, no matter where you are. I already have a lot of personal information floating around in the flotsam and jetsam of the 'Net. This blog, for example. But I've become quite comfortable in my general anonymity. And I already keep in touch with the people who are most important to me. I figure that if someone from my past really wanted to find me, they'd find me. Or find someone on Facebook who knows where I am.

My overall feeling about this is that someone, somewhere, will inevitably come up with something better. And then a bunch of people will migrate to that, and then everyone else will follow in order to stay trendy and connected. For now, I think I'm going to sit this one out.

"I've been waiting, I've been waiting for this moment all my life, but it's not quite right"