Creepiness, Thy Name Is Facebook

I've made a lot of jokes about Facebook and Twitter stalking. They're not that good. Usually I just say that instead of getting to know someone, I'll just stalk their social media accounts. In my defense, I say it directly to the person and I haven't got an uncomfortable laugh or a restraining order yet, so I'm going to assume that it's perfectly okay to get to know someone by clicking through every picture they've posted, seeing which of their friends I know, and looking at their interests. I'm also going to assume that I'm fine even if it isn't okay, because I generally don't have the attention span to do all of those things...or even half.

My point being, people give up a lot of privacy on Facebook and they do most of it voluntarily or even eagerly. And I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. I like being able to passively keep track of what's going on with various people in my life and status updates and photos let me do that. Plus, with a lot of families living so far apart, being able to post videos and photos of major events is a good thing.

That said, I've noticed that Facebook has a knack for somehow making even benign things creepy. Maybe it's because I'm on the defensive due to Facebook rolling out new features that are invasive and making the least private option the default setting. Maybe it's because I'm aware of the fact that Facebook is a large company whose primary goal is making money and who realized early on that the key to making money was encouraging people to share everything with little or not regard to the consequences. (And maybe that makes me uncomfortable because I'm pretty the Girls Gone Wild videos operate on the same principle.)

Or maybe it's because Facebook presents information in a creepy and awkward way. For instance, tonight, I made a post about being excited that my favorite teahouse was doing a tasting event for my favorite tea (Darjeeling, in case anyone is making their Christmas list early) and the opera is performing an Indian folktalke, The Flowering Tree, the week after. I then discovered that Facebook shows friends' interests that are related to your updates, because showed in the little space where ads and things my friends like show up that "X likes opera."

Is this private information? No, because people had to voluntarily click like. It's even topical. But it's awkward. In fact, it sounds like a conversation with one of those socially awkward people that never seems to be able to carry their part of the conversation. You know, where you tell someone your great and clever story about the charming, funny person you met on your trip to Paris and the person replies "I like French fries."

I guess it's good to find out more about my friends and I suppose this is Facebook's way of sneaking in directed ads using your friends helping you connect more with your friends, but overall, it just helps to reinforce that feeling that Facebook is the creepy stalker who tries to read over your shoulder on the computer and digs through your garbage in hopes of gaining more insight into what makes you tick by studying your discarded catalogs and fast food receipts. And frankly, it's probably the fear that someone can gain insight into me based on my Williams Sonoma catalogs and receipts for frozen lemonades that makes me uncomfortable with this.