I love facebook. I enjoy sharing snippets of my daily life with people who have bothered to add me as "friend" (yes, when it comes to the virtual world, i use the word friend quite loosely). I equally find it entertaining to read about what has been keeping people in my virtual world busy. I enjoy playing psychologist, trying to read behind the lines and photos. Truly, facebook tells you more about a person's insecurities than about a person's real life.
Think about it. That girl who keeps posting images of meals taken at restaurants must have grown up deprived of the joy of dining out. The friend who keeps posting shout-outs about her shopping sprees was probably a recipient of hand-me-downs. That person who does nothing else but watch pirated movies at home must have no constant relationship to speak of. The guy who keeps your wall occupied with images of his new "toys for the big boys" perhaps missed playing with action figures and toy cars when he was little. It can be a sad, sad world that they are living in, made even more depressing with the virtual "realities" that face them everytime they log in to their account.
I used to get annoyed by the hype someone would try to put in for what seems to me are trivial, every day occurrences of life - say, the standard lunch fare becomes a full-blown "it-seems-to-me-that-my-friends-do-not-know-what-spaghetti-is-so-i-am-going-to-post-a-close-up-photo-of-my-half-eaten-meal" experience. But as I come to share someone's virtual life, I have learned to recognize that I live in my own dysfunctional universe too. That if I am truly, absolutely mortified by all these postings, I would not even dare log in to spare myself the pain. And yet I do. Every day. Multiple times a day.
I guess I like knowing that there are people more dysfunctional than me.
