Social networking, the obsession for all ages..

Why is everybody so obsessed with Social Network sites? Firstly Myspace and then Facebook. I am, I have to admit, the definition of a Facebook addict, I check it daily, if not a few times a day, update my status on a regular basis and bring a camera out with me at all times to upload pictures to my facebook account at any opportunity. But where did it all come from? Well I originally had a myspace account and this is where the obsession began for me, spending hours at my computer adding friends, making my profile look pretty, commenting on peoples pictures and wall posts, trying to portray an image of myself that i wanted people to see. Dannah Boyd refers to myspace as being 'essential to being seen as cool at school'.
 Facebook then took over, everybody left myspace and their 'pretty' profiles, to go onto a boring blue and white website that iinitially all i thought you could do was 'throw sheep' at people, what was it all about? As more of my friends left myspace and joined facebook I thought id give it a go. I now haven't checked my Myspace account in a matter of years and am fully dedicated to the once boring, blue and white Facebook. But what is it about these Social Network sites that hook us in? Well in all honesty I believe its the concept of 'being nosey' everybody loves to sit in the street and people watch so why not do it from the luxury of your house through your laptop? You can find out in a matter of minutes what your friends are doing today all through the wonderful realms of Facebook. Also allowing your friends to know what you are 'doing'. My emphasis on doing is apparent because i think there is a thin line between Facebook status updates and the truth. Very few update there status with 'just having a cuppa and a biscuit' it is more like announcing something you want people to know 'out on the lash with boys/girls'. But then there is what I like to call the 'cringe factor' of Facebook, when they feel the need to publicly display their dirty laundry- why oh why would you tell the world your heartbreaking secrets? keep them to yourself.
 Facebook is something that seems to have captured people of all ages, it was once mainly a teen based site but now seems to have attracted a larger audience. It is a brilliant way of contacting old friends and family. But again isn't it really just an excuse to be nosey.
 There is, of course, now Twitter i am unable to speak about this in much detail as i have not yet given in to the twitter bandwagon so don't really know what its about but i do know that a lot of my friends on Facebook are gradually moving over to Twitter. So will Twitter take over and Facebook but left in the dark like Myspace was..?

Second life- What is the fascination?

Before starting this course i had only briefly heard of Second Life, it was not something i had any interest in being part of and therefore did not know all that much about it. I had heard in the news or possibly just in the rumour mill that it had caused marriages to fail, people to lie and deceive, but it was just a game, could a virtual game cause this much trouble? Well in workshop 23, we were asked to set ourselves up a second life account, have a look at it, explore it and see how we found it. Well i can safely say that was the one and only time i have or will be visiting Second Life.
 The most enjoyable thing about it was creating yourself a character, being able to look as you wish, bigger boobs, a smaller bum even reducing the size of your nose or mouth. So i set my character up to be this beautiful slim 'perfect' girl. After my character was complete i decided to do as Simon had asked and explore Second Life, see if i could find out what all the hype was about. I did some exploring, i learnt to fly and transport myself to different areas and then i braved the scary concept of actually talking to people. The majority of people that i came across were older men, although there was also a lot of women, on this particular occasion it was men that i cam across most. So i would start a discussion, about anything really and then lead it to possibly their age and what they enjoy about Second Life. Now for example one man that i was talking to, his character looked around mid twenties, tall, dark and handsome. When i found out how old he was, he was 56. Is this not the deceit that i previously mentioned? OK, so i had modified myself to get rid of a bit of excess weight but i hadn't knocked 30 odd years off my age. The concept of talking to this man then seemed wrong, why would a 22 year old girl want to talk to a 56 year old man that she didn't know?
 When searching Second Life on the search engine 'Bing' i found it strange to find that the first link that came up was a Marital Affair Dating Link, for 'people looking for additional uncomplicated excitement' - was this what Second Life was all about? I  thought the idea of Second Life was an improvement on Internet chat rooms because you get an idea of what the person actually looks like, It seems i was wrong as people ,understandably, change their appearance for the better.

 I think the concept of Second Life is good and if people feel that this is a good way to interact with people then that is perfectly acceptable but it isn't something i will be joining as a leisure activity now or in the near future.

                                                                                 Real Life.

      

                                                                              Second Life.

Facebook and The unwanted friend

In this blog I wanted to look at something that has become quite a talked about subject within my friendship group recently, the Facebook phenomenon and people that, you may have seen but don’t actually know, adding you on Facebook. Why because you meet somebody once or have briefly looked in their direction do they feel the need to then add you on Facebook and view all the details of your personal life. I understand that we have the option to ignore their request if we wish but I don’t understand the need for them to add us in the first place. When looking at this i went back and looked over the acrticle in our handbook ' Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of networked Publics in Teenage Social Life' Dannah Boyd's article, she dicusses the fact that when asked it was found 'teens join Myspace to maintain connections with their friends' so why are people adding people that they dont know? When thinking about this I then decided to go onto my profile and have a look at my friends list, in doing so, I noticed that some of these people I had added and I could see the details of their lives and what they are doing. I then decided to go through and delete the numerous amounts of people that I really didn’t care what they were doing so why I was friends with them I didn’t know. After going through and deleting old school friends, friends of friends and even family members that I have not seen or spoke to in years. I realised I had actually deleted nearly 100 of my ‘friends’. So maybe I was as bigger culprit as any for adding/accepting people I barely knew.

 I then looked at it in another way, the fact that on Facebook, people put their daily routine and it would be visible to all of their ‘friends’. So for example, ‘Amanda Bowe is going on holiday tomorrow.’ Everybody knows that I will be away from my house, that my car will be there for a week untouched and also my house will be empty. You may as well put a sign on your front door saying ‘Away for a week, help yourself’. Yet we don’t see this a strange thing to broadcast over Facebook. Ok, so I understand that the chances of the people you have on Facebook as ‘friends’ robbing your house is unlikely but if we continue to add people that we really no nothing about, how do we know? The reason I made the decision to delete all of these people from my Facebook is when looking at their status updates I realised that I didn’t have any interest in what they were doing and I certainly didn’t want them to know what I was doing. Of course there are my close friends that I like to know what their plans are or see the photos that they have uploaded for as for the others I simply don’t care.

 I recently discovered a better way to ignore these friend requests without them knowing, you just never accept or decline their request, therefore they are not offended by your rejection but you don’t have to allow them into your Facebook life. As a result of this I currently have 12 unaccepted friend requests.