I love you but I hate you.

Facebook is a social networking site which main purpose is to connect users, similarly to MySpace or Friendster. It allows you to create a profile that includes personal information about yourself, your interests, pictures and practically anything you can think of. Each of these pieces of data is now a link and after you click on it it shows all the other people who listed the same element on their profiles. Connections are also based on FB groups you can join. You gradually build networks of friends, contact them and set meetings with them. Although the very idea of the site is fantastic, I must say that not all FB profiles result in positive outcomes for the users. Creating one’s self identity or shall I say virtual identity pushes us and encourages us to discover who we are and how we relate to other people. The freedom of speech we gain once we’re on Facebook often leads downhill and just joking around comments can hurt other people who happen to be reading them.  Jealousy seems to play a big part as well – ambiguous comments, pictures and secret messages of our loved ones can drive a lot of us crazy.

 Although Facebook seems like a little private forum we administrate and have full control of, the sooner we accept the fact it’s public the better. Anything that has been ever uploaded to it belongs to it forever and there's no way back. Simple delete button won't solve the problem, however, it will help make given post or picture invisible to other users. Sadly, a lot of people on Facebook think that somehow the number of friends they have is suddenly the measure of their popularity (Facebook makes us call them friends when in fact they’re only just connections – often not even acquaintances). They’d kill for a cooler profile and pictures that in other circumstances they would surely keep away from public content (embarrassing shots, boasts about drinking or washing dirty laundry in public) but instead many of them simply lack the discretion or class (or both) and present themselves, and others, inappropriately online. They themselves spending hours and hours a day updating their statuses, joining useless groups such as “I hate Mondays”, looking at other people’s pages, taking pictures of themselves for their profiles, seeing who knows who, who goes out with who, who broke up with who… the list never ends. Then the whole thing of I don't like you and I won't accept your friend request as well as You upset me and I'm going to delete you now come on scene and ridicule Facebook even more.

I’ve tried using Facebook creatively (my wishful thinking!), staying in touch with friends, finding out and sharing information, talking to people with similar interests, joining my academic community, contacting my lecturers and basically everything that might provide new opportunities for my professional development plus networking. Unfortunately I find it unmanageable for the simple reason that all the people who are on my ‘friends’ list will be able to ruin it for me with one simple useless crap they post and I waste time looking at. Should I delete all the people who, in my opinion, contribute nothing at all, and, instead, surround myself with those of similar interests? Will this not potentially limit my exposure to new ideas and experiences? What is the solution? (Here's a brief linguistc digression - sensu stricto I can't really delete anyone - this is where Facebook takes part in word formation, along with other examples such as add sbd)

I have now deleted my old Facebook profile containing quite a bit of personal ‘dirt’ shall I call it and I’m settinp up a new account that I plan to keep public and open, however, as far as I’m concerned, the personal messages live in my Inbox and not where anyone can access it. The problem is that most of the unwanted data on my Facebook happens to be uploaded by other people and hardly ever myself which will require of me to be very strict with regular deleting all of the rubbish I don’t want on my wall. Facebook in fact allows you to block your wall from people commenting on it and this might be an option for me, however, this will mean some of them who could contribute positively will not be able to do so. Again, what’s the solution? Facebook, I love you but I hate you!