I recently made as my Facebook status, “Aubree Lawrence misses honest status updates.” A former student commented on the status and asked, “Aubree, what do you mean? Just curious. Does it have to do with the ‘old’ vs ‘new’ facebook?”
A quick question that prompted a lengthy response from me. (Surprised? I didn’t think so.) Facebook has a limit on comment length, and it took four full response boxes to reply to Rachael’s question. My response, in full, is reprinted below. My mind is still whirling around the topic. My friend and colleague Vanessa Rhinesmith has been blogging about managing the Social Media in her life, raising some great questions about how to integrate social media to complement her life… and not invade it. Her blog entries, my midnight status update and Rachael’s subsequent question reflect the anxieties we have about Facebook, how it is changing and how it is changing us.
Without further introduction, our exchange:
Status Update: “Aubree Lawrence misses honest status updates.”
Rachael: “Aubree, what do you mean? Just curious. Does it have to do with the ‘old’ vs ‘new’ facebook?”
Me” “Hi there! It depends, in this case, what you mean “old” vs “new,” which seems to get used at least two ways.
Old vs New can mean the formatting changes instituted about 4-5 months ago. The updates caused a lot of confusion and upset, spawning many groups with names like “Facebook, change it back or I quit.” (I made that particular one up, but you get the idea…)
But Old Vs New can mean something else. Social Media, in particular, is in constant flux, changing as the users who engage with it change. Facebook exploded past its origins as an online “who lives in my dorm” tool and became a means of community organizing and a quasi-professional tool. Its membership base grew, and the dynamics of Facebook (in my anecdotal opion) changed accordingly.
My own observation is that the “old” Facebook (”old” is such a relative term) had a degree of freedom and self-expression now missing from the Facebook experience.
In the “new” Facebook experience, one must consider the audience at large when posting… anything. Pictures, even quotes and status updates. There are tools to help manage what goes out to who, no question, but what you don’t let others see can raise suspicion among the denied. You can “de-tag” yourself from images, but your image is still out there posted indefinitely in the most navigable manner possible - a visit from a friend of a friend.
Even your profile can be problematic. I’ve recently been reconsidering my “Religious Views” profile item, which reads right now “Religious Views are lamer than scenic ones.” While early on this got a lot of chuckles, I’ve worried as my number of friends went from 30 to 170+ that I’ve been retro-actively offensive to some people. It’s hard to know what people will take seriously when they aren’t your most inner circle.
Most specifically, however, I was referring to my own status updates, which have gotten very… bland, I guess… since my Luddite boyfriend joined the Facebook party. Love him as I do, I’m sensitive to his feelings. I felt bad recently when he brought up that I posted “is bored” on New Years, when he was one room over.
I struggled Monday night to articulate my feelings into an appropriately “cathartic yet cryptic” status update. The thing is, Steve knows me very well. He’d see through “would rather be dancing” to the relationship anxieties I (and everyone else, let’s be honest) go through from time to time. He’d know it meant I wish I could turn the lights on and listen to music and make an idiot of myself dancing in the mirror at 1:30am… all things I can’t do since he lives with me. In that moment, I was remembering loving living alone. And, at 1:30a, I worried that that might hurt his feelings.
Of course, Steve is Steve, and he not only wouldn’t mind that I wrote it, but I’m sure he’d understand, and even sympathize. I can’t imagine he finds living with me all roses either! So, at 1 in the afternoon here I don’t mind spelling out word for word on my wall what, at 1:30 AM I thought might hurt his feelings. (He also would never bother to read this long of a post, so I have that going for me too.) 
Still, it was a moment that magnified for me personally an anxiety that I know many of my close friends feel about the way we “used” to be on Facebook. Facebook is growing in usefulness, but declining in personality. We can only wear one mask at a time, and we change masks according to our audience. On Facebook, we must try to wear many masks at once, morphing us into an “average” of all our various masks and personalities. The look (and outlook) is pretty bland. Its inevitability (the bland morphed mask) is somewhat ironic on a tool called “Face”book.
::laugh:: Does that answer your question? :)”
Is there a paper in here somewhere?
