Facebook is stupid. I was looking at my home page today and noticed the relationship status bit was blank, even though I have been married for 11 years, long before I ever discovered facebook, so I changed it. Immediately, it flashed back with “Willie Watson got married today.” Stupid.
But, what do you expect? It is only a social media site, it responds to input and, of course, this is partly my fault for not understanding the system better.
There are plenty of other things I dislike about facebook, but I won’t go into detail here. Plenty of other people, with much more technical knowledge than I, have made those complaints much more eloquently than I could.
I’d just like to talk about a couple of the positive ways it has changed our lives, and one new thing that seems to be becoming a trend, and I think it’s basically positive, but the possibility for abuse is pretty much unlimited.
Birthdays. Facebook is great for keeping track of birthdays, and it’s great to get an inbox full of birthday greetings, even if most of them are as shallow as any article on TMZ.
Also, facebook has reconnected me with many old friends I haven’t communicated with in years and introduced me to a couple of relatives I never knew. I consider that a major improvement to my life. I’m sick of all the cat photos, but it is a small price to pay.
Those are the positives.
Now, the latest thing that is happening. A couple of people have posted things on my page recently outing others for abusive behavior. There was a woman who went after her abusive mother, posting a Mommy Dearest type expose, and I thought right on, that is awesome. When child services, the police and the courts fail, abused children now have recourse. Then today, I read a post about a woman who outed her rapist and I thought double awesome! Get the truth out on facebook and let the chips fall where they may.
Then I read the article. They’d been dating. He raped her. They continued dating. For two years. Now she goes after him on facebook. Although a lot of my feminist friends are telling me that doesn’t matter, she’s still the victim, I’m not buying it. It reminds me of the scene in Life of Brian where the mother is telling her son that his father was a Roman soldier. “You mean it was rape?!” he says, horrified. “Well, at first….” she says.
This meme will continue to develop. I’m sure that in many cases, it will lead to justice or, at least, vengeance upon people who’ve seriously got it coming. But in other cases, it will lead to slander, counter-recriminations, big, ugly grudge matches and family feuds being played out in public.
The important thing will be knowing the difference.
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