What the internet asks of me
Categorize your friends.
Facebook introduces “Lists”. That drives me to sort my friends into lists in a very OCD-manner.
Initially I thought it was just a matter of privacy, but as I clicked away I thought, why is Facebook asking me to categorize my friends? It wasn’t as simple as ‘this person can see my updates and that person is allowed to see practically nothing’ (yes, I might as well delete them off my Facebook; but it’s awkward, because Facebook calls that unfriending); but everything in between - there’s a bunch of people who can be more than acquaintances, but they can’t see as much as my close friends do.
What?!
These are the groups Facebook is basically asking me to categorize my friends into:
- I’ll let you read my thoughts and I can spam your wall
- You’re allowed to have a rough idea of what I’m up to
- You’re not allowed to see my face on Facebook
- You can read my insincere and thoughtless updates
- You can read my Twitter imports because I don’t know how to make that private
- I added you because you just asked me why haven’t I added you
- I only added you because I rejected your friend request and you sent me another one
Of course, if I’m that concerned with privacy I should just refrain from using Facebook, or think about what I share; and I think I’m willing to do that, simply because I don’t want to have to categorize every single one of my friends. (Plus, it gets too awkward when I have to sort my family into lists.)
