(also known as - Shit that pisses me off.)
Anyone else think of your friends as per their profile photos? I know I do.
You'd be hard pressed to find someone in the developed worlds in the 16-30 age range that doesn't have a facebook (maybe Avril and her h-core middle fingers don't cos she doesn't believe in "The man") and it's hard to find a celebrity who isn't addicted to tweeting every 5 seconds of their day.
Social networks are the coolest way to interact with people without actually interacting with people. As per the social networks agenda, it's supposed to be all about you you you, and interacting with others that are similar to you you you. Look at youtube, it's a channel where YOU get to post about YOU, and others get to feed into your burgeoning narcissistic personality and comment about YOU.
The downside to having so many websites focused all about you, is that everyone is able to know EVERYTHING about you. Even things you don't want them to. I have my privacy settings on facebook set to the most it can get, sharing things only with my friends so I can be free to comment on whatever my little heart desires. A dirty FML joke? Oh yeah, I can share that cos no one else can see it. A picture of me dancing on the bar with a tequila bottle in my hand? Yeah that's okay too cos only my closest 600 friends can see that.
Apparently not so much.
The other day the head of my department (I'm a college girl ya'll) came in to address our students and said something that disturbed me, even with our extra careful privacy settings, companies are still getting out information, adding us as friends to get a peek into "who we really are". Now this becomes a predicament when going into the job hunt.
It's my final year of school, I graduate soon and am about to head out into the real world, and you're telling me some no-named corporate slag is assigned to cracking into all of my facebook, twitter, myspace, blogger and youtube accounts to get a peek into "who I really am?"
Really. Really? REALLY?
I can honestly say that a video of me singing "cold hard bitch" on rockband during a NYE party with my drunk sorority sisters isn't a clear example of how I will behave in the workplace.
Turns out social networks don't exist for us expressing ourselves, it's for corporations planning on hiring us to weed out the drunks, the sluts, the misfits, the conspiracy theorists and all the rest of us colourful archetypes of internet users and only to hire the socially acceptable.
Have you ever tried "cleaning" your facebook page? That shit is hard. 6 years of status updates, pictures being posted and wall posts is nearly impossible to filter. Especially if you're in college or university...it's just a blur of keg stands, inappropriate pictures, and a multitude of swears slamming your professors and classes.
I, for one, think this is big bag of bullshit. I started cleaning my page to get rid of my sailor-esque form of language used in my status updates and screen out the more embarrassing of drunk pictures, but is a picture of me and my friends at a club, smiling, holding a martini all that bad? I don't think it says much on my work ethic, more of that I can have a good time post work and not look terribly sloppy. But maybe that's just me?
The fact that companies can go to facebook and buy our information is just sad. Way to go with your privacy settings facebook. I have many friends that try to get around this by changing their name on facebook (you know all those people with their first and middle names instead of their last names on there? Yeah, those are my people.) But I'm not entirely sure how effective that is, assuming a company has your email address and your information, I'm sure they can figure out "John Brad" is "John Brad Adams" especially if you have a unique name - nice try though.
Can you believe there are entire departments in some companies focused on social networks and sleuthing around to find your deep dark secrets? That companies can fire you about things you post on your social networking sites, and that companies may not hire you cos of one status update or one photograph?
Orson Welles may have got the year and the medium wrong, but he got the underlying concept. Big brother? Oh it's happening alright, it's so under the radar that it's right in our faces.
I feel like I've seen a face like this before...hmm...wonder where?
The social agenda? Social networking sites to monitor our behaviour and weed out the less desirable.
It's anarchy out there.
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