Friday, 10 June 2011

• Facebook: Pandora's Box

  

  Do you ever wonder what life would be like without your Facebook account? I'm positive most of you have one being that it's a great way to stay in touch with the friends you never see, connect with the friends you see everyday and check up on friendships and relationships that you have lost. It's another great way to remember all your friends' birthdays and not feel like a jerk when you write on their wall instead of actually calling them.

  I can honestly tell you that when I'm bored I find myself typing my ex's names into the search box to see how they look and if they are happy and hopefully I appear to be happy too. But let's face it, is it really healthy for us to keep looking at our past, checking up on people we no longer stay in actual contact with and comparing their lives to our own? I'm not sure, I personally am one who doesn't like surprises.

  I would rather be prepared than shocked to see an ex has a new girlfriend, is moving to another state or looks even more handsome than he had when we dated. But that's me. I can deal with seeing my past, most of the time I'm comforted by the fact that we are both moving on to people who better suit us. While I will always care, I know that when I find someone incredible I will most likely stop typing my ex's name into that search bar. I'll spend less time looking through pictures like I'm a part of a sad Taylor Swift music video and start taking my own pictures, but that's another story for another day.

  There's a dark side to knowing every detail about an ex or even a current boyfriend. What happens when an attractive girl begins to flirt with him on his wall? If it's a long-distance relationship how can you trust that there is more to the situation than seeing a photo of your boy-toy with a pretty blonde sitting on his lap or even posing next to him in a group picture? Trust obviously plays a role but we are all human, jealous type or not, and there's always a curiosity that messes with our minds that questions "what if?"

  Having a Facebook is like opening "Pandora's Box." Once that private knowledge is revealed to you or to someone who is looking you up, that information can never be stored away. It's out there and ready to be shared with the world, or at least to people who actually care to stalk your life.

  A fabulous example of Facebook lending a hand in demolishing a relationship can be demonstrated by one of my best friends, lets call her Ashley. This girl is absolutely gorgeous and funny and an all around great person, but maybe I'm being biased. Long story short, she dated this horrible guy for 3 years whom she was deeply in love with and he currently attends a university in Florida, 1200 miles away from our university. During the third year of their relationship he started to make his Facebook extremely private and even blocked Ashley from seeing his wall or his pictures.

  A fight would erupt any time her boyfriend was tagged in any pictures where he had a girl on his arm, was in a girl's bed (obvious pink sheets), or had a girl bent over while they were grinding in a club. This would be a red flag to anyone outside the relationship but Ashely loved this asshole and didn't want to believe that her boyfriend would ever cheat on her. While there are scenarios where girlfriends blow out of proportion what their boyfriends are doing in pictures, this situation left much to Ashley's imagination and caused massive blowouts between herself and her boyfriend until he deleted her as well as her best friends from his friends on Facebook and ultimately dumped her for a girl he had been cheating on her with 5 months prior.

  Technology today plays a huge role in the beginning and the ending of a relationship, Facebook can accurately tell us now that we've been friends with a particular ex since October 2006. It's an easy way to flirt without feeling truly rejected when the feelings aren't mutual and an easier way to misinterpret connections between people who have no interest in one another besides friendship. Think about how many times you've changed your profile picture so you can look more attractive than you did a month ago.

  Check to see how many guys or girls you have flirted with, publicly, in order to show an ex or just people in general, that you have moved on. But that's just it. Whether you use Facebook, Twitter, or have a blog, all of this is public. Yes, you can change your privacy settings but for the most part you want people to see what you are writing and you want the world to know you are happy. But most of all you want to see the people you care about whether you would like to admit it or not. Just know that any information you post, tweet, or blog becomes public knowledge once you hit enter and with each comment comes its consequences.

  How has Facebook effected your relationships? Ever feel like Facebook causes problems that wouldn't be there otherwise?

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