You Will Be Assimilated

[livingdeb]

That's right, I have joined Facebook.  (Am I supposed to capitalize that?  Or is it uncool to capitalize it?)

I really thought the last straw was going to be when my LiveJournal friend L visited from Boston and caught me up on some things going on with another LiveJournal friend P, who was off on a different trip, and she told me she learned these cool things from Facebook.  But apparently I needed one more straw and that was begging from my mother and sister, who do not write blogs at all.

I prefer blogs because there's lots of space!  For writing!  And keeping track of stuff!  It seems like Facebook is better for explaining things like "I had toaster pastries for breakfast."  Or, as I was telling a co-worker, "I added a new section to the &H variable list."  However, I also get to find out how people are doing and I get to see my mom's baby pictures and S's pictures of a totally awesome Hello, Kitty cake she made herself.  So, I'm staying.

Okay, but for some reason everyone seems to be using their actual real names.  With actual, real recognizable pictures of themselves at their current age.  The real-name thing is okay with me because my name is way too common and Facebook has been out way too long for it to be easy to find me and identify me for sure.  My face is unique, though, of course.

I love seeing everyone else's pictures, though.  And I definitely don't like a big empty head floating next to everything I say.  I'm still figuring out a strategy.  For example, a picture of the back of my head would be pretty recognizable to anyone who's known me since about the seventh grade, when I quit wearing my hair in ponytails, but it wouldn't let anyone who doesn't know me see what I really look like.  Or I could get some sort of line drawing of me.  Or just some other picture that's not of me but somehow symbolizes me.  (Like a groundhog?  Look, I'm already doing a Facebook joke because I took the petronus quiz and it said it should be a bat, but it got everything all wrong, and so I hypothesized that really it should be a groundhog.)

Really, none of you guys is paranoid?  It's really okay to have a regular picture out there?

Comments

[madspark.livejournal.com]

My picture has been in the newspapers, on TV, in magazines (Make and probably Craft), I have five books published, my name and e-mail are very public... I'm not particularly concerned about having a pic in Facebook, too.

[madspark.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, I don't know that I _know_ your last name, so you'll have to find ME on FaCeBoOk... (Edwin Wise)

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Mwahaha! My last name is safe!

Actually, your picture here is another example of not showing people exactly what you usually look like.

[madspark.livejournal.com]

Yup, I like this picture so much! My FB pic is boring, though...

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

It's like the two sides of you. You look all tech-knowledgable in your other photo and here's your silly side.

And now you know my last name. Nice and forgettable. You're forgetting it already. Mwahaha!

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't care? I mean, I have a completely unique name, and presumably all the people I have friended on Facebook know me personally, so they know what I look like. I dunno. I guess I suddenly stopped being shy sometime last year!

Several of my friends use icons of some kind. Either a cartoon, saying, or teeny tiny picture of themselves in front of, say, the Eiffel Tower, where they are unrecognizable except as a speck. One friend uses a panda. So I don't think you need to have a picture! But yeah, replace the grey head thing!

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

I will. (But when? I don't know yet!)

[alethiography.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Unlike my blog, which is semi-anonymous, my Facebook account is something I consider completely public. If I snort coke on the weekends (which of course I don't), you won't read about it on Facebook. So yeah, I have no problem putting my real face up there. I mean, I'm friends on Facebook with people I already know, so they know what I look like (as someone pointed out above), or, if not (because they haven't seen me since middle school), I want them to. And in real life I meet people with my real face and name all the time, so again, I don't see a problem.

I mean, I am friends with my boss on Facebook. That is a little scary. But it just helps me remember not to post things to Facebook that I would mind my coworkers, family, friends, future children, etc., seeing. And my face is not one of those things.

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

True.

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure what the risks would be of having my own face next to my real name with information I know to be public in a forum in which you basically put stuff out there for people who already know you.

I got date-approach emails from people in my city network (always polite ones) sometimes before I set my marital status to married, but you can also just set your privacy settings so only friends can see your info.

-sally

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, and obviously you can use an icon or a less-recognizable photo or whatever; I chose not to do that because it interferes with the whole "person I was in band with in 7th grade won't be sure if I'm me" thing, and much of my motivation for joining was to easily find out what's up with people I've known in the past. -s.

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

True. I currently have a bunch of privacy on that account, and I've revealed only my high school, college, and this one summer camp I worked at for four years, because the people from those places are the only ones I'm really interested in helping to find me.

Mostly I'm finding my more recent friends by peering into my friends' friends.

Alright, I'm convinced. Now it's time to start looking for a photo. I want it to look like me, but also not just sweaty and raggedy like I usually look.