Facebook has become a very large part of more than 1.2 billion of our lives. The popular website has not only changed social interaction (mainly adding to the lack there of) but has impacted the way in which we share information and the ways in which we do business. For example, on this little old blog, Facebook is responsible for over 78% of my leads, with over 14,000 shares on a singular post via this medium. I use Facebook everyday, to share blog posts, to share business leads, promote ventures to target audiences, to see what others are up to and of course, share a few moments of my own. Because I frequent the network on an almost constant basis, this lent, I decided that would be an excellent thing to give up.
I got off to a late start this year. I had things I wanted to post and a particular person I wanted to add. Before I begin, let me make a meager attempt to preemptively defend myself.
As of this year, I am running a small business, sporadically sharing quips through this blog, rounding up the last year of my Doctorate, working full time and closing completion of a children’s book. There are a few more things I haven’t mentioned, but the point is, as busy as I am, none of this has interfered with my chronic need to check my Facebook news feed. I had no idea how much I went on Facebook until lent, when I deleted the application from my phone. On several occasions, throughout the day, I found myself picking up my phone and then putting it back down because there was no longer anything to do on it. I’m not gonna call anybody (I, like many others, would much rather text) and I had no social media, so I almost found the phone useless.
Recently, I met this guy through a very close friend of mine. He was my type in many senses of the word and before we even became friends I found myself on his Facebook page. This was her fault initially. Prior to us meeting, she would say, “I have someone that would be sooo good for you,” and follow up with pictures from his profile. From there, I found myself going on to see other pictures or view what he had posted to his timeline. Once we met and became Facebook friends, this became somewhat more frequent. I developed a full on crush and even found myself using the “view as” feature, as I’d also become concerned with how my page appeared to him. Now, I consider myself a calm, cool and confident girl. I’ve never had to ask anyone out or question if I’m wanted, yet I found myself on this young man’s page almost daily. Because I consider myself to be normal, that is by whatever in-concrete standards society has laid out for us, I concluded (perhaps for my own sanity’s sake) that this must be normal behavior. I’m sure people stalk Facebook pages, right? I meagerly and with the utmost safe guarding asked others if they’d ever searched out persons they were interested on social media. I got a lot of yeses. Some of the lengths people went to were somewhat perturbing, but I was in absolutely no position to judge.
The Formula
Technology has changed the way in which we do and access so many things. Things we were once burdened to ask for or cautious to request are readily available without a person ever having to know. Long gone are the days when your boyfriend would give you a picture to remember him by. A conversation is no longer necessary to find out certain things about a person. Now-a-days, by simply browsing through a person’s timeline you can find out their likes and dislikes, where they’ve traveled, who they’re closest to and what kinds of things they get into. A friend of mine once caught himself commenting on things he had no business knowing during a live conversation with someone he was courting. I do think it’s a little cooky to be on someone’s Facebook page to the point that that’s the only thing you find yourself doing on the network. I also think it’s odd to like and follow every single thing on a persons page, but crushing on a person and subsequently visiting their page for a little more than from time to time may simply be a sign of the times. Is Facebook stalking easing it’s way into a new normal?
Does it come down to who’s willing to admit the behavior as opposed to whether or not the actual behavior is occurring? There are levels to down right creepiness, but where that ends and begins, I’m not sure anyone could definitively say.
What are your thoughts? Is it all out creepy or have you found yourself on one persons page far more than any others?
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