has facebook normalized stalking?

Facebook has normalized stalking. Five years ago, if anyone was caught hoarding 300 pictures of one specific person, you would think they were pretty strange. Now, this is simply part of most people’s daily experience. You only have to catch sight of laptops in workplaces and universities alike to see people scrolling through picture after picture of people they have probably never even met. We are a nation obsessed with stalking. And it’s right at our fingertips.

Back in the day, when my parents got together, my Dad did not sit and look through 500 pictures of my Mum, he did not check her ‘status updates’ and he did not see who else was writing on her ‘wall’. He actually spoke to her in real life, because reality was the only realm in which communication was possible. Whilst on some levels it has its benefits, there is most certainly a point at which a line needs to be drawn with this parallel world, where for some people ‘friends’ are people we might have seen, from the back, once, or friends of friends of friends.

In accepting someone as a Facebook friend then, what we’re basically saying is ‘I’m happy for you to stalk me’. Not only is stalking now ‘normal’, we actually give people permission to stalk us. I suppose that’s what makes it ‘ok’. Of course then, one must be sure to be represented as well as possible by their Facebook profile, since this is the only version of our ‘self’ that the majority of our Facebook friends will encounter.

here are a few conclusion:
- Its a sad story when people sit round on Facebook instead of engaging in real life communication
- The idea of random people i hardly know scrolling through numerous photos of me freaks me out.
- Given that I have 6000 words plus a presentation to write in 8 days, I am clearly procrastinating.

the end