there's a lot of discussion - and controversy - out there about the benefits (or not) of social media. is it a good thing, a bad thing, a neither-one-it-depends-on-how-you-use-it thing?
yes.
why anyone should expect or want facebook (and any other form of social media) to be any different than "real life" is beyond me. life is good and it's bad and it's up to what each of us does with it.
period.
take high school, for instance.....
recently, one of my facebook friends from high school asked our other facebook friends from high school who their favorite teacher had been. i said i had been too unhappy in high school to even notice the teachers.
i received a lot of comments and private messages telling me how shocked everyone was to learn this about me. that i had always seemed so happy, so funny, so upbeat, so this, that, and the other that, well, they just assumed i was happy. for not being happy, i sure acted like i was!
yes, i did. acted like i was, that is.
how is that any different, really, than people who "act" like they're one thing on facebook when really, they might be entirely different in "real life?"
how is me faking it to the whole wide springfield north high school world any different than you posting a picture of "yourself" that isn't really yourself?
high school could have been happier for me - if i had let it. but i didn't. i didn't let the positive overcome the negative. i did the reverse. i let the negative damned near kill me.
i am glad, for lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of reasons, that i didn't allow high school to finish me off. one of those reasons is facebook.
because now.......now that all the angst of adolescence has finally passed........now that i finally know "who i am" (gag me), i can go back and be friends - on a computer - with the people i missed the first time around - in "real" life.
and oh, by the way?
mr. pyle.
