Taking the Facebook Plunge

I did it. I joined Facebook. I put together the profile, added the pictures, the whole nine yards.

As it turns out, I set up an account over a year ago. I have only a hazy memory of doing it, but I seem to remember that it was in response to some nastiness that some students had written about a colleague. I was outraged and, in a moment of haste, thought I might bust up the party with some dramatic pronouncement (I was thinking of something along the lines of "gotcha!" -- clever, right?). But the process of joining Facebook turned out to be a lot of effort, or at least it seemed like it at the time, convincing me to abandon the process pretty much after I'd selected a user name and password.

So I forgot the Facebook account until several people invited me to join them as "friends" on Facebook. The one that got my attention was my first boyfriend's sister. It's a powerful network that can track down you brother's ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago. You used to have to need a private investigator -- and a reason -- to do something like that. Hearing from the ex-boyfriend's sister "inspired" me to Google the ex-boyfriend. He's fine, by the way. He apparently didn't die of grief that we broke up in 1991 after dating off and on for seven years, which is fine. It's fine. Really. Fine. Cad. But I digress . . .

Then there was this interesting confluence of events. I searched my e-mail to see who else had wanted to add me as a Facebook Friend. One of the requests came from my best pal from law school. She's 15 years my senior and is on Facebook. Really. Next, someone posted a message about Facebook on a law professor's listserv, indicating that it was good to be on Facebook. As it turns out, a lot of people 15 years my senior are on Facebook. People who are not at all creepy. People who are on SSRN. I succumbed to the peer pressure, pulled up my old Facebook account (whose password I remembered courtesy of a savant-like talent I have for odd combinations of letters and numbers), and started filling in details.

So there I am. Something about having a Facebook profile honestly makes me feel a little exposed. I feel like I'm hitchiking on the information highway in my pajamas.

And I have to admit that I do sympathize with the students a little more, having gone through the process of setting up. It is hard to remember that it can be accessed by my students, my Dean, my friends, my children, and my mother-in-law. That's such a broad audience that it almost defies the brain's ability to imagine it. Admittedly, this blog can be accessed by all those people as can my faculty profile on Touro's home page, but the blog and faculty profile reveal far less information about me than the Facebook profile forms ask for. I want to be personable, but I don't want to be stalked or inappropriate.

Modern life is so complex.