Op-Ed: Facebook Flakey Much

So, we’re Facebook friends, but are we friends? 

Flakey people piss me off. “Flakey” according to urbandictionary.com, means being “unreliable or fickle,” and before you give me a hard time for using it as a source, urbandictionary.com can be very reliable when it comes to certain things. I am generally a very black and white person, someone who makes decisions fast, but sticks by them. I’d like to think of myself as a generally “non-flakey” person. Or we could even put it this way; I’m “anti-flakey.” But there’s just something about Facebook that makes me a total flake, an uber-flake, if you will. But I’m okay with it.

To make it easier for you, let me take a few steps back to explain the situation which has brought me to this flake vs. not-flake conundrum. I’ve always been on the fence about Facebook. Attending an American university and experiencing typical college life would undoubtedly have been meaningless had it not included this fairly new invention. Founded in 2003 by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, like it or not, has come to consume college students’ lives.

Facebook is well-equipped for distraction. With photos, videos, groups, and an assorted variety of applications (my personal favorite, FarmVille), it’s astounding the amount of time one could possibly waste. Not to mention things like status updates, wall-to-walls, and notifications, Facebook allows us into people’s personal lives. This is where I introduce another term, “to creep.”

I found myself spending a lot of unnecessary time on Facebook, mostly on people’s profiles whom I rarely spoke to, or people who I didn’t know very well. It was right before final exams week, and I realized what a creep I was becoming. Urbandictionary.com says that a “creep” is someone who “makes moves in a shady, often times questionable manner, usually involving the use of the key tool, Facebook.” Bingo.

I panicked, feeling a little (a lot) embarrassed at what I had turned my Facebook-ing into. So I quickly deactivated my Facebook (it was all in the moment mind you) and I immediately felt so much better, and shall I say, less-“creep”-like. But as I sat there in front of my laptop, letting the actuality of being Facebook-less sink in, I had a disconcerting feeling, as if I had just cut off my phone line.

Immediately the next day, people started asking me why I had done what I had done. I told them exactly why, and they nodded, not quite in any enthusiastic or supporting way, but more in a solemn understanding of my supposed plight. They empathized, but did not sympathize. And I didn’t care, because I never wanted to go back to my creeper status. But the one question I was asked repeatedly was, “How am I going to contact you now?”

Facebook has made communication so much easier and efficient. And after some reflective thinking on my part, I came to this conclusion: being a creep on Facebook is not the direct result of actually having an account, but rather, having “friends” who really aren’t friends. I can’t even count the number of random friend requests I would get, some from people I had heard of, but never had spoken to, and even weirder, people from countries like Latvia or Sri Lanka, people I had definitely never met.

Keeping Facebook friends to a minimum, people who you want to communicate with on the net, those with whom you are trying to reconnect with, or real friends that you communicate with one a regular basis, all are reasonable. Keeping your Facebook friend list complete with real friends and contacts easily solves the creeper issue; I just wish I had figured this out before I had impulsively deactivated my profile.

So then, I did something that I rarely do. I went back. I went back and reactivated my account, and I actually felt better for it. I went through my entire friend list, removed all the people on my list who I hadn’t spoken to in more than a year, or those who I hadn’t spoken to ever. It’s interesting to see that the button to remove friends is actually very discreet; I’ll bet none of you guys even know where it is.

The point is, people need to give Facebook a break. People give it a hard time, calling it an invasion of privacy and a distraction; I did the same thing. But by taking a step back and reanalyzing your relationships with social networks like Facebook and relationships within Facebook, you realize that you have complete control over what it is that you do on Facebook. You are the master of how much time you spend on Facebook, and whose profiles you decide to cree—sorry, browse. It’s all on you.