Facebook Dilemma

Is Facebook ruining your relationships? Wasting your time? Sucking the life soul out of you?

I am having a facebook crisis.

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with my sister. She felt facebook was ruining her "real" relationships. She wondered, if she posted something - did she really tell her friend about the experience? Was she really connecting? She closed her facebook account.

She got me thinking about the place facebook has in my life, and whether I was truly connecting with people. Then, I read this article: "Facebook wants to be your one true sign on," and I wondered, how much should facebook be the centralized place for my online life?

Facebook used to be my personal space only. A place to share a few pictures and comments with close friends. Get invitations for my friends' art shows and concerts. Find out what the gang is planning for Saturday night. I loved perusing pictures of friends who now live far away, catching up on old times, and clicking on hilarious links.

But then the onslaught happened, former students, people from work or high school, and the greater universe at large requested my "friendship." How flattering! I say, sure, and now we are connected.

Now my past, present, and work life are mixed together and not easily compartmentalized.

I find myself posting less and less and becoming more reserved about what I post. I take down pictures that someone else might find offensive or misinterpret about me because - honestly, some of my new facebook friends really don't "know" me, and they miss the irony.

What about the message I want to send to my co-workers. Some of whom could become direct reports? So I pull back a little more. My humor becomes more reserved; I white-wash my comments and posts and "clean-up" my language; I stifle my "off-color" humor.

So, what happens? My facebook is not even me. It's the "edited" version. The radio version. The one that doesn't make mistakes, is always smiling in pictures, never tells dirty jokes, isn't "too political," and doesn't use foul language.

It's the Stepford me.

Perhaps the dilemma will solve itself; I'll become so boring, people will unfriend me.