Failbook

I must say my mind drifted a little in our lecture about social networking and self identity. "Differentiated Identities converging" I wrote down in my lecture notes to describe what social networking is doing to our identity. This could almost be a tag line for Failbook.

For those unfamiliar with this website, the general idea of it is users post screen shots of stupid statements put on Facebook by their friends, (block out their names and photos) and leave them there for the pleasure of the world wide web. There are some ridiculous comments on the site, which make just perfect examples of differing identities people have converging on Facebook because people forget they have added their relatives or work colleagues. Within the first page (at the moment) there are two statements where family members have found out more information about their loved ones than they needed to know.

I think the best one on there, has a girl bitching about her "fucking boss" who she forgot she had on Facebook. There is a wonderful comment under the statement from her boss who comments that she must have forgotten she was only under a 6 month trial, and as there was only 2 weeks left she might as well not bother coming in anymore to work. Although I laughed, its the kind of thing that could easily happen to me. I have my boss of Facebook.

It almost gets awkward if some of your work friends or your boss add you on Facebook, because they are going to see you everyday and will know that you have declined their request.. It becomes easier to add them, but then you run the risk of them seeing something on your Facebook which shouldn't have been put up there.

Are we all going to learn to adapt to this merged Identity or is Failbook going to have many more victims to come?