Facebook is quite a place …
Sometimes Facebook seems like your living room. It’s a comfortable place, filled with old friends, family, and co-workers, where you can lean back, relax, and share with those who know you best …
Other times Facebook is like an intimate coffee date, quick lunch, or even an easygoing and intimate dinner where you pour your heart out to someone near and dear…
Facebook is even a place where you can explore different places and events, sample various concepts and perceptions, and even do a little quick shopping …
All from the privacy of your own home:)
Except it ain’t …
Facebook is the town square of a very large village which includes millions of people from all over the world.
Facebook is 24 hours a day, every day of sophisticated surveillance and eavesdropping equipment with one purpose:
EXTRA SPACE
To know what you are doing and saying.
Facebook is not warm and intimate. We just perceive it that way.
Rather, Facebook is cold and open, where strangers who do not know you, agree with you, or care about you have access to whatever you choose to share.
Facebook lulls us into a false sense of community and privacy … while exposing us to a very large and very impersonal world.
Proceed with caution…
Quit thinking that some “secret” process or checking a few boxes on your online profile will change this reality.
Facebook is social media with all the possibilities for positive interactions and sharing and all the potential dangers and risks of exposing yourself.
… Or maybe I’m just tired of seeing people forget the above and then rant about the results or post breathless “announcements” about how to change their online presence into something other than .. well, than an online presence.
I use Facebook every single day, but I never forget that whatever I say or do is seen by untold numbers of people who I do not know. It makes a difference. If I say something online, I am prepared to support it.
Bottom Line: Use social media like Facebook and other sites carefully, responsibly, and realistically.
Feeling a tad irritated by human behavior in the Heartland ….
John
When I first started on facebook to increase my ministry presence, I was horrified to find you couldn’t block comments to pages (I have blocked a number of individual words), but have realized how wonderful an opportunity to converse with unbelievers it can be.
On the flip side, my required personal profile is something I was mostly passive in for a long time. Recently, I joined an escatology group controversial enough my own husband is on another side of the issue. It was a shock to realize he knew what I had posted there because it showed up on his newsfeed.
I’ve found facebook a concrete reminder of God’s statement that He knows every word I say before I’ve said it.
Your words about criminals and such are just a little intimidating. Thanks for the warning!
Interesting to see you a little irritated … welcome to my world … particularly regarding the comfortable little world of FaceBook. Am I to believe that the alphabet soup is monitoring my rather uninteresting life … yeah, I said that years ago. Hope they are getting lots of sleep as a result
Hi, Kathleen
Thanks for commenting. My primary frustration is with the folks on FB who do not realize that they are in a public forum. When I talk about people watching, I’m referring to criminals of various types and those who lurk around discussion, waiting for an excuse to flame someone.
John