Wall posts, inbox messages, tagged photos, tagged posts and the all-important "facebook official" relationship status are all virtual reminders of a real relationship which hopefully existed beyond this blue and white virtual forum. A click of a button can summon old memories, create new ones on the screen and facebook chat your crush just as he comes online. The big question is whether all this virtual attention to our relationships is helping them or hurting them.
In the movie He's just not that into you, Mary, played by Drew Barrymore feels overwhelmed by the complexity social media brings to her love life. I find that myself and many others, feel exactly the same.
Drew Barrymore as Mary in He's Just Not that Into you
How many times do you meet someone interesting and immediately rush home to log on and stalk their profile? How many hours have you spent memorising your exes profile, tormenting yourself every time you click on that picture of him and his new girlfriend? How many times has his new girlfriend studied your profile, sizing up a virtual representation of you that sometimes bears no resemblance to the person you actually are?
We live in a world where first impressions do not come in the form of outward appearances but as a Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Myspace profile. Today if you want to improve the way you appear to the opposite sex you do not get a haircut, you change your profile photo. Virtual qualities are sometimes more valued than real ones. Internet dating sites consist of thousands of people who have the ability to use photoshop on their photos and all types of false advertising. My one friend in Johannesburg, Tamara* (the name has been changed) recounts an incident when she met someone online and later discovered that he was not 21 as his profile suggested, but rather he was a sixteen year old who had not yet graduated from high school. She was unaware she was dating someone illegally.
Well, how do you solve a problem like this? You just don't meet anyone online, right? This is a reasonable plan but even each meeting in real life is automatically followed by a stalk session on the web. My friends and I live for these sessions. We have anything, from his age, which high school he went to and his hometown to his music interests, his religion and his sexuality, at our fingertips. The only problem is that I would have preferred to know these things by actually asking him, getting to know him the old-fashioned way- through an actual conversation maybe had over coffee or a dinner. I once met someone who told me he never had any religious beliefs until he prayed for his friend who was in a coma. The next day she woke up. Would I have known this from his listing of Christianity as his religion on Facebook? When you take the time to find out what a person actually is about it provides a much richer picture, full of colour and depth, much more than the one accessed on the two-dimensional blue and white Facebook wall.
And even when you meet someone you like in real life, the relationship status on Facebook is a trap in any relationship waiting to begin. When do you become "Facebook official"? If both people are not on the same page when answering this type of question, being "official" might lead to becoming "unofficial" both on the web and in real life.
And even if this hurdle is overcome, are constant facebook inbox messages from the person you love completely fulfilling? Many couples spend their lives posting their love on each other's Facebook wall. Is this romantic? Or is it just a more convenient way to remind someone how much you love them. As this is the Internet, you are also reminding everyone else as well, to your single friends' greatest dismay and annoyance. In my opinion, it takes away the intimacy of affection. I personally wish that one day I will receive a letter in the mailbox or a phone call instead of yet another notification.
Facebook is also another one of the countless spaces in which we can embarrass ourselves in front of the opposite sex. Except that we have access to it ALL the time. It is also a much-too-convenient way to stalk our exes. The old-fashioned way would require hiding in a tree with binoculars, now it requires a web address followed by the click of a mouse. In many ways, constantly reminding ourselves of this person by obsessively stalking them stops us from being able to let them go and turn our attention to making future relationships a success.
Facebook is not just a waste of cyberspace though. Facebook does lead to people who would not usually meet falling in love with each other online.A lot of these people even get married. That is great for them, but for me, I choose to "unfriend" my exes, attempt to stop cyberstalking and to keep my relationship status off my Facebook wall and in my real life instead.
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