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Facebook Experiences and Stories
Write the story of your life and identity/ies on Facebook. Some questions you should address: How long have you “lived” there? Has the time been continuous, or with breaks? What does Facebook do for and to you? Who are you on Facebook and how has that changed?
(You could tell this story using your different profile pictures/cover page as the spine.) If your profile picture is an avatar, what work is it doing for you?
How do you feel about your Facebook life and persona? Would you like it to change/to change it in some way?
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Facebook proposed changes
Facebook has proposed some changes in its data use policy:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-site-governance/proposed-updates-to-our-governing-documents/10153167395945301
How will it affect the stories you tell on Facebook?
Playful Facebook
Way back when I joined Facebook, it was a site only for college students. A rite of passage into the community of higher education. The opening of Facebook to anyone with a valid email address definitely changed my experience. Suddenly, I was friends with co-workers, professors, and friends of parents. My senior friends were starting to worry about what their potential employers might find on Facebook. Myself, I found the whole thing taken too seriously for my comfort. It seems obvious to me that Facebook can only represent a portion of my person. I have a Facebook persona, a Serendip persona, a work persona, a family persona, etc. Facebook is about fun for me.
I like to play with the information available on Facebook. Often, I share New York Times articles hoping to provoke comments from my friends. I like the occasional details from my friend’s lives appearing in newsfeed. It’s a source of amusement to me. Not much more. For amusement, I married my college roommate on Facebook. We are close friends, vacation together, and have no sexual interest in each other. We call our relationship a Boston Marriage, see Henry James for clarification. My roommate’s family still lives in Boston. Her mother loves the joke and is now my Facebook mother-in-law. We call each other wifey and she has dibs on my old iphone. What started as a Facebook joke is becoming a permanent part of my life and identity. We have not gone so far as to get legally married. So it is fun. Especially, the confused congratulations we get from distant Facebook Friends. Can you really call someone a friend if they didn’t know when you married??? That is my most amusing Facebook dilemma.
FaceBook and the Old Lady
When FaceBook was started I gleefully joined in, only to drop out for a couple of years before attempting to cancel my involvement (turns out AFAICT [as far as I can tell] that one can NOT un-join). Too many dimly remembered folks among the joyfully remembered, so bye-bye FB.
Then my 40-something daughter urged me to reactivate: "All my cousins are on it, it's a great way to keep in touch with them and your cousins, THEIR parents. " So I did. Two of my three children "friended" me, the third thinks it's weird to be FB friends with your mother.
Today, newly 70, I have been participating actively for about 3 years because there are so many wonderful BMC alumnae (and 1 or 2 alumni), cousins, kissin' cousins, local and and church friends to keep up with. Cousin Brucie in Saskatchewan (for real) keeps me posted on what he is playing (he's a church organist); BMC friend Stasa in Edinburgh was the one who informed me that Jane in suburban Philadelphia, her teacher of Scottish dancing and my elder daughter's best friend's mother, had died before I saw it in the Inquirer.
I often send my younger daughter messages via FB because she checks FB more often than she does the telephone answering machine. My 12/14/16 year old grandsons post and I am (generally) amused and/or stunned by their wit/their language. Our communication about the latter are dealt with privately through messages directly to them. Once, I found was scared by the emotional content of one boy's public message and sent it to his father (my son) for parental investigation.
From reactive comments or responses to individuals, to announcements of choir concerts to my whole list; from amusing observations to political observations to beauties and curiosities of the natural world, FaceBook offers each subscriber a private and tailored daily news letter. And then there's a BMC alum's daily photographic journal of her year in Singapore with her academic spouse: travelogue & anthropology via photography sent to a large class of grateful fol.
FaceBook is not (in general) a place for in depth analysis or exploration, especially of personal circumstances, but for concise information speedily transmitted, Fb can't be beat.