Thursday, October 27, 2016

Returning to Facebook

With all our activities this year, I realized that some of the groups we're now involved in communicate via Facebook.  I've been off Facebook for five years because they deleted something on my page (non-offensive) without my permission.  I decided to return to Facebook this week.  But, it's interesting.

My husband made this stipulation to me when I opened a new account:  "Don't put anything on Facebook that you wouldn't want in the newspaper."  I think this is wise guidance and it is what I am using to make decisions about what I post and what I don't post.

I realize that I have walked back into the world of deciding who to be friends with and not friends with on Facebook--what to say and what not to say.  When I got off Facebook years ago, I realized that people wanted to be facebook friends with me who hadn't been nice to me when I was a kid.  When people say that people will do and say things they wouldn't in person, they usually are referring to insults people are willing to hurl at people on the internet.  But, ironically, I found that people are also willing to be "friends" with people they wouldn't be friends with in person.

Facebook introduces a complex series of decisions--a complexity of which I had mostly forgotten until this week.

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