My first thought after reading this article was that the title actually has a double meaning. Facebook "suicide", as the author states, is when one exits this realm of social networking, cutting oneself off from the virtually constructed community that links so many people together. However, Facebook itself could also be considered a suicidal device inflicting our "real" lives. Personally, I can relate with the anxiety that the author mentions, brewing over the course of a day, wondering if I've made any new friends, received any notifications, or thought of a perfect status update. Even Facebook terminology has infiltrated our modern lexicon, with terms like "friending" denoting the acceptance of a new contact, or "posted", referring to this action of making something public and shared between all on a common page.
I have never seriously considered deleting my facebook to commit "facebook suicide", largely based on the fear of becoming disconnected with that social world, or losing all of my "friends" and pictures. Checking facebook has become as normal as checking emails, but I can visit my page without doing or changing anything. I hope that like previous social networking sites, facebook will become less and less a part of my daily life as I grow up; however, knowing that it isn't a site geared towards only college students anymore blurs those lines a bit.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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