It used to be the case that you would graduate (or drop out) of high school or college, you would leave a job or some staple of your life or a city and when you did, you left behind all of things that came with that experience. That might have been your friends or your family, the activities and groups that you loved, or it might have been the past that you were very intentionally trying to leave behind. Well Facebook has most certainly challenged that notion and it may in fact have altered the nature of our ability to simply, "move on."
My personal experience has most certainly been kind of a trip for me. For a long time I ignored Facebook, which is sort of hypocritical since I'm a big fan of the importance of the social network theory and its impact on our society. To be frank, I'd simply convinced myself that I was too busy to deal with it, even though I knew that it could be useful for events that I was promoting or things of that nature. I'd received all sort of different advice about using, and even tried to utilized the technology of Facebook and twitter spontaneously during "A Day in the Life of HHC: West Coast" when Hip Hop Congress (A national Hip Hop organization preservation the culture of Hip Hop through education an political action) was having events in 3 states simultaneously throughout the day. As whole, HHC was still new to the technology so the day was a little bit rough. If anything, I can remember it pissing a lot of people off and stressing a lot of people out. My point here is that even though I was sure there was a value to the technology, I was more inclined to stay out of it. The curve may not have hit yet as HHC had attempted twice to create an organization page and been rejected due to the fact that they didn't seem to be accepting pages for groups just yet.
Then, in months of February and March, something very interesting happened. Twitter started to climb dramatically, which some speculated to be connected to the rising unemployment rates. This was never verified but one thing was for certain, technologies like Twitter and Facebook, which allowed more real time coverage of life and communication were growing exponentially. Around august, I decided to stop being stubborn and take the advice of all my friends and colleagues and started dragging my behind online to "connect with others." I never could have been prepared for what happened.
Initially the technology from Facebook began connecting me to the other folks I knew were online. I started searching for those that I could remember to search for and they started to pop. Over time, though, it started to grow more dramatic. Suddenly, Facebook was introducing me to people from my High School, my elementary school, college, virtually any job I'd ever worked at for any period of time. Following came my brother, my mother, my sister, my cousins from both sides of the family. Almost anything I could imagine. Somehow the word was spreading and Facebook, a technology designed almost exclusively for students, was connecting me to every part of life that I wanted to be connected to.
At one point, the reconnection to everything made me feel overjoyed. Then, I started remembering everything. You see, being face to face with almost every aspect of my life brought me into contact with what has become a relatively cold reality of Facebook and social networking technology in general. If there's any truth to the concept of "out of sight, out of mind," then Facebook has brought us square to the doorstep of the opposite of that reality. In a world where Facebook and twitter are dominant, transparent and nearly omniscient forms of communication, blocking something from the near or distant past out of your head has reached a new level of challenge.
My own struggles with this have led me to some new insights about my life and what I want for it. It's also led me to increasing consider how I would like to use this tool, and the consequences for such transparency. More and more, I'm beginning to hear the stories of ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends stalking your every update, those who used to consider themselves sly being caught by the simple nature of their Facebook updates or even worse, their status. And at it's worst I've heard stories of those who've been seriously wronged at the level of sexual assault, domestic abuse, molestation and more. I've also seen an increase in the attempt to set boundaries on such a scenario as exemplified by the recent circulation of groups like "No Sex Criminals on Facebook" and "I don't play Farmville." The reality has nonetheless imposed itself upon those that have chosen to make themselves a part of the Facebook reality. In a world that keeps informed to the point of knowing someone's dinner, schedule for the week, and relationship status, it's hard to hide anything from anything, especially yourself.