Facebook mania

What's the worse possible thing you could do to someone who is already internet addicted?

1. Pull the plug on the internet connection (OK some would say that's the BEST thing you could do...)
2. Give them something else to 'play' with that uses more of their time.

Well, a few days ago, for the first time I experienced stupid internet drop outs. It was very painful not knowing whether it was going to work or not. A technician even came and checked it out and it was fine. Then, a few hours after it left that dreaded flashing light came back - ARGH! I am not sure but it might also have something to do with the modem overheating in this crazy heat. It has been hot for about about a month now but only this week has it gotten really hot. The last 2 nights were the first time I actually could not fall asleep because it's too hot. I usually turn on the air-con 10-30 mins before bed, then leave it on as I'm drifting and when I find myself almost falling asleep I turn it off. However, it hasn't worked the last two nights because it's just too hot! ARGH. Anyway...

I have finally entered the FaceBook world.

I was a bit 'slow' given I practically live online. At first I had no clue what it was about. It seemed you needed to register to see anything and at first I just couldn't be bothered.

Then a few months later I decided to check it out again and registered a bogus name. Prior to that I looked at screenclips I found on Google images but it wasn't enough so I decided to join up and have a poke around. Nup, still couldn't do anything! You need to add friends to see their pages and they need to accept you. OK so I started small and added 2 friends. Now I was finally getting the idea of what it was all about!

I never joined up the myspace craze because I just hated the page layouts. I hated the loud designs and the music and photos slowing the page loading down. I couldn't even stand to look at anyone's myspace page. However, facebook is much nicer. The design is clean and easy to understand and navigate.

A week or two after my initial poke around (where I was only looking and not doing a great deal) I decided to search for people. A few weeks prior I had already done a quick search for some people but it was a pain in the butt because a lot of my friends have common names so the results turn up 50 or 100 results and I have to sort of guess which one is them?? Or make them out from a tiny photo! So that kind of put me off. It was another reason I kinda didn't want to use my real name since mine would be the only result with that name. Also, my sister's boyfriend decided to scare me about how FB collects your data for statistic purposes or something or sells it to people.. I dunno if it's true or not...

Anyway, round two. Six Degrees of Separation. The results from my 'stalking' behaviour:

I looked up people from my past from 10 or more years ago. Most did not enable a public profile (bummer) but some did. I looked up the guy I had a crush on in Year 10 (now engaged and not looking nearly as good looking as I thought he did when he was 15!), I looked up my first boyfriend (who seems to have a lot of 'friends' on his list). One name looked familiar and it turns out she is a girl I knew from a forum (she only visited a handful of times I think but I remember her name).
Then there is the friend I made 10 years ago when I went to on a travelling tour of Taiwan with a 'youth study group'. I went through his friends list and there was a girl on I knew, also from a forum.
Now, I've added some girls I went to high school with and there is a girl X on their list. I don't know who she is but her surname really stands out because it is 3 words. This sounds stupid but I remember this girl who worked on a big-name Australian fashion magazine because of this strange 3-word surname so I go through X's friend's list and sure enough, that magazine person I was thinking of is on her list! (probably her sister).
Back to my first boyfriend (oh so long ago!) I noticed on his friends list were a lot of people that I knew on a BBS I used to frequent. I was a bit annoyed the only person I really wanted to find out about did not enable his profile, but everyone else did.
I'm sure I'll find more weird six degrees of separation stuff...

So far I'm liking facebook because it is kind of like email, MSN (and other IM systems), websites, chat sites, forums, blogs, flickr, you tube, schoolfriends/friendsreunited all rolled into one. But it's good because you can allow or disallow people to see YOUR profile page (which you can write messages, add photos, play games and score against one another, etc).

So anyway, I found all these people that I used to go to school with and lost contact with and figured I HAD to join just to see their profiles and their pics. Amazingly, out of my high school peers 1) Most seem to be living overseas at the moment, 2) Most are not married and those that are have only married recently and do not have kids. Interesting, given everyone is about 30. I think it's just the type of people though. I had another friend from high school who got married when she was 22 and now has 3 or is it 4 kids.

Just had to get this all out before I forgot.

ARGH! I don't know what the crap is going on. But everyone I looked up the other day.. I mean every single person.. well their profile is now gone private. It just seems weird that all of a sudden these people (who have nothing to do with each other) have decided to put their profile on private?