Hey everyone! My name is Nanditha Ramachandran. I know, kind of a mouthful. I go by a multitude of nicknames so feel free to call me pretty much whatever you want within reason. I’m a sophomore Policy Analysis and Management major, and I’m taking this class because I’m starting a minor in Communication. I’m from a suburb of Chicago called Naperville, but I like to pretend I’m from the city. I’m not quite sure what I want to do with my life, but I’m thinking law school for now. We’ll see how I feel about that in a couple years.
So right after you read this blog, you will probably go try to find me on Facebook. I don’t blame you; I would do the exact same thing. Facebook owns me. It’s hard to classify Facebook in one of the spaces Wallace discusses, because nothing of its sort existed when this book was published. It’s a cross between asynchronous discussion forums, the World Wide Web, email, and something else foreign that hasn’t been defined. There are many aspects of Facebook that completely fascinate me and I’m sure that I will never fully understand, but one that really stands out is how much it means for people’s perceptions of relationships. A relationship is no longer considered legit unless it is posted on Facebook. Of course there are the rebels who just refuse to post their relationships altogether, but for the most part once it goes live on Facebook, it’s a big deal. News Feed will find a picture of the lucky couple and post it on your friends’ main pages like an engagement announcement in the newspapers. The walls of the involved persons will be full of comments from their so-called Facebook friends that go something along the lines of “OMG I love your new status” or “You have so much to tell me!”
First of all, if you were really friends, you shouldn’t need Facebook to tell you about a significant relationship in that person’s life, but that’s beyond the point. Why does it even matter so much? How did it come to this? Is it really worth all the attention we get when you posting an amazing, new relationship, when you have to deal with the same level of attention if and when you change that status back to “Single”? It's definitely nice to share your happiness with your friends, but I am currently “Married” to my roommate because she didn’t want to deal with putting up her "Single" status again after she broke up with her boyfriend.
To be honest, in my one year of having Facebook, I have yet to have any relationships to post, so maybe it’s something I just won’t get until the opportunity arises. For now though, I will continue to wonder at the power those words “Relationship Status” have over people.
The guy who posted right below me wrote about the same thing...woops.
2 comments:
I feel your pain. As nice as it is to log on to Facebook (more than a few times daily) and see who is in a relationship and who is not, I find the whole idea of a Facebook relationship a bit strange and overrated, for the exact reasons you mention. After breaking up with my boyfriend last year I also refused to go back to “Single” status on my profile – it just seemed too final. So now I am happily engaged to my best friend. She was also my roommate at the time, so the title of fiancée did not seem like much of a stretch. What are your thoughts on being “In an open relationship with blank?” Unless it is clearly a joke between friends, I feel quite uncomfortable whenever I stumble upon this relationship status. What are these people thinking? “I still care about him/her, but there’s always the chance that I’ll be in the mood to make some bad decisions…”
Hi, as the guy who posted right before you and wrote the same thing, I completly understand where you are coming from. It is completely ridiculous. However, the facebook relationship status does seem to act as a sort of social conscious. It completely prevents you from being able to lie to someone else about your being single for more than one night, then again, I guess one night is all it really takes to screw up anyway. It significantly increases the chance of you getting caught, at least. In that sense at least, could you argue that facebook acts as a positive social force?
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