Stalkbook voyeurism

I've been meaning to write a post about Stalkbook, I mean Facebook, for ages. Why? Because it fascinates me. I love the way it can induce all sorts of heated arguments from people who have stayed off it, proclaiming that it's an invasion of privacy. Somebody even called it 'dangerous' the other day. Come on, people, it's just Facebook. Guns are dangerous, crossing the road without looking is dangerous. Facebook... not so much.

Nobody forces people to go on to it, or upload their photos, or become friends with people who used to put chewing gum in their hair at school. It doesn't actually define your relationship status. I haven't heard of any hijack situations where people have been forced at knifepoint to log on and, shock-horror, update their statuses. Nope, as far as I can see, it's just made voyeurism part of everyday life and, come on, who doesn't love a bit of voyeurism, hmm?

I do understand that the internet is filled with predators and it's possibly not clever to allow your wayward 12-year old daughter to frolick about on Facebook unattended, but us consenting adults with more than two braincells to rub together are probably quite safe. And those twits who stay home from work because they're hungover and announce it on their statusses for everybody at work to read, well, they're just twits, and twits generally do get caught out every-so-often.

One little thing I struggle with, though, is friend requests from school people. I don't want to hurt people's feelings by denying friendship requests so I leave them festering in my notifications box (or whatever it's called), inducing guilt every time I go in. Why, though, would I want to now be friends with someone who, really, was very mean to me at school? More guilt. Then I remind myself that it's just Stalkbook.

And then there's Farmville, that appeals to my 10-year old boy brain (and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Okay, maybe a little), and Scrabble, which I'm completely addicted to. That reminds me, I have a fabulous Facebook Scrabble Romance story to tell from my long-ago past. I must write that post too. I must be off now, though... my Forget-Me-Nots need harvesting and I should pet my turtle.

There's nothing wrong with living on an imaginary farm until I get my real one, surely?