I got two F's for you...Facebook and Friendship

Recently two friends of mine who were at one time super close, stopped talking. These two were not only friends but neighbors who would spend Sundays watching movies, eating together, helping each other when drunk, walking pets for each other, covering for each other, and helping each other in every way. These two close friends now have strain in their relationship and are currently not speaking because of something that has potential to be the big evil in all our lives. That thing is.... FACEBOOK.

That's right it's Facebook. Good ole FB. It seems one of the two friends has bothered the other by incessantly commenting on their posts. The comments are long and drawn out and end up hogging or hijacking the entire comments section. It seems friend A who does the commenting doesn't realize that they are taking over Friend B's page with their comments making the original status seem insignificant compared to the comment. Friend A has always done this though and it's never been a problem. In fact it's always been a plus in their relationship. The weird thing is that the private little quirks that brought the two together in private get to be annoying when they are out in the open. You see these two used to love to complain to each other about their lives and loves and problems when they would hang out. Now however with the social networking revolution that is happening in the real world as well as the cyber world private conversations have a tendency to become public nightmares.

Those of us who spend time on social networking sites like Facebook need to be cognizant that we live in two communities, our actual physical private community and our on line public community. Let's face it... all of us have relationships in our personal private community that we aren't exactly comfortable with being part of the public one. Can I tolerate and even enjoy discussing old classic movie musicals with my mother in private? Sure. Do I want her posting memories of how much fun we had watching West Side Story on my facebook wall? NO!

Recently an old friend of mine who also happened to be an ex girlfriend made a funny comment on my page that led to my making a playful retort that some might consider a little flirty. It actually wasn't flirty and it did not bother my wife who I think would actually like this old friend of mine if they were to meet should we ever vacation near where she and her family live. No the problem came from the members of my online community who were concerned that my wife might not like the posts. Now one side of me says this is none of these people's business, but on the other side... didn't I actually make it their business by having all of it take place on Facebook.

I recently heard a story about a person who decided that their Facebook page was a good place to insult their publicly traded fortune 500 company and point out how much they didn't like their boss. They were fired after co-workers who were online friends reported the posts to the boss.

What about the genius who decided to use his Facebook status to brag about how he was late for work and his moron boss was to stupid to even realize it. He actually used his status update to brag about putting on his sunglasses in order to sleep off his hangover. Yep you guessed it He was fired.

Then there was the person who worked at a financial institution where it is expressly forbidden to pass along information about any customers. This person could not help themselves however and decided to let all their Facebook friends know the name of the celebrity who's paperwork came across their desk. Uh huh ...FIRED!

Some of these are just cases of stupidity where judgement is so impaired you get the feeling that these people were dumb enough to get fired whether Facebook existed or not. In other cases you see conflict and drama caused by what I like to call one of Facebook's biggest problems. LACK OF INFLECTION.

We human beings have found ways to communicate by using things like humor, sarcasm, and self deprecation. We use tone and inflection to prove our points as well as hand gestures and facial expression. What we refuse to recognize though is that we can't convey such things with the written word of status updates and comments. We still try to use inflection in our written word communication and of course we can't understand when someone doesn't get it.

One female friend of mine made a comment about how she looked in an outfit even though she actually looks great. One of her Facebook friends is in her network because he is dating one of her friends. The guy notices that his girlfriends friend is having some self issues and tries to lighten the situation by using some sarcasm and saying "yeah you look Terrible". All that the girl saw was YOU LOOK TERRIBLE. She dropped him as a friend, she dropped his girlfriend who she just so happened to have grown up with and been best friends in high school with, she dropped friends of the friends and then put out a post attacking men in general. This was all because in our minds we hear the inflection but in Facebook all we see are the words.

I have always thought Facebook should add a voice recorder element but lets face it... one of the reasons we love Facebook, Twitter and text messaging in general is because we don't have to take the time to verbalize our thoughts. We should however take the time to realize that not everyone is going to read our words the way we hear them in our head.

Last but not least in the thing that literally drives me bonkers in Facebook and that is the spelling. It's America and it's 2009 so I am not expecting all of us to spell like were 9th graders with roots in Mumbai but come on people, can't we do a little bit better. Have we forgotten the differences between our and are? Have we given up trying to figure out when to use then and than? Have we turned our heads and stopped trying to properly learn the usage of their, they're and there? Worst of all goes to one of my facebook friends who routinely talks about his working out and how his athletic TRANOR KILT his MUSSELS but he's happy his FOURARM size is growing. What needs to grow is his vocabulary and spelling skills but the trainer hasn't gotten to that workout yet. I actually think less of people and question why I am friends with such horrible spellers. When I have actual spoken word conversations with these friends they just seem so ... less dumb.

Facebook is one of things changing how we connect with people in our lives. I guess what it all boils down to like everything else is it has great potential to make our lives better but it also has great potential to make our lives worse. If you get angry with someone in your private personal life you have to work up the courage to confront and challenge. Sometimes when working up said courage you realize that maybe what you were angry about wasn't really that bad in the first place and you end up forgetting and moving on. If you get angry with someone in Facebook you can immediately hit a button and put an end to a relationship. I am not so sure if the next improvement that Facebook needs to make is a cooling off period for the ending of friendships. 24 hours might make a big difference.

I hope my friends can work it out. I also hope that you LIKE THIS blog. Of course I will know if you do because all you have to do is click a button and it tells me.