Facebook stole the romance from human relationships

We’d never know what people were having for dinner, or that they couldn’t sleep, or which telecommunications company they were currently on hold to.
And hasn’t dating got a whole bunch more complex since FB? Before you used to keep someone’s stuff to punish them post-break up. Now, it’s the first one to post “is single” and de-friend them that wins….

Or worse, the one who keeps them as a friend and then takes great delight in posting pics of themself draped around someone else with accompanying snappy one liners about how fab life is now that they’ve got rid of the dead weight that was holding them back.

And what’s the friend-ettiquette surrounding a break up? Do your friends have to de-friend him post-split too?

I’ve heard it’s handy to keep one friend on your ex’s list, so they can spy on his posts and pics see if he’s looking all sad and pathetic or if he’s hooked up with the tart from his work who you always suspected wanted to have a crack.

There’s even hurdles for those relationships just blossoming.

Before FB all you had to worry about was when was the right time to drop the “I love you” bomb and what if they didn’t say it back?
Now, you have to ponder when is the right time to change your status to “is in a relationship” which tends to then jump to the “are we exclusive?” conversation, which is always awkward as hell.

And do you link to them when you do change your status, so all your virtual friends can judge his looks, his posts, his clothes, his friends?

And what happens if shock, horror, your new man dares not to be on Facebook, then your friends can’t judge him at all?
Can someone explain to me why anyone would post their relationship status as “it’s complicated”? You may as well just say, “we keep hooking up but he/she doesn’t want to date me”. Talk about over-sharing.

It used to be that you googled someone when you first started dating. Now you get onto facebook, see what friends you have in common, trawl through all their old pics to work out who was their ex (and if you’re better looking than them)... It does your head in.

But sadly, it’s not just our love lives that have turned into a social minefield – work has become a nightmare too.

We’ve all had those awkward moments of having to accept friend-requests from colleagues who you can’t stand and whose weekend ventures you definitely do not want to know about.

Should you friend-request your boss?

Can you be friends with only some of your colleagues when you work in a small team? Can the non-friended colleague then complain to management that they’re being bullied?

What is the polite way to decline a friend request, or if you’re even more ruthless, de-friend someone?

I don’t understand these people who collect facebook friends as a status symbol. Someone I know has 7000 friends… Who knows that many words, let alone people?
Others assess their friend request like the door staff at a nightclub, “not in those shoes mate”.

I love facebook. It’s a great way of staying in touch with friends, particularly if they live interstate or overseas, but gee, some people seem so busy leading a facebook-life, you wonder if they actually have time for a real one.

While some people are sharers, others of us really don’t like broadcasting the intimate details of our lives with those we met once at a party and befriended them cos they seemed really nice and even bought us a glass of the house white.

And here’s an interesting thought – on November 1, people will shut down their facebook and twitter feeds to support Autism sufferers. Check it out here.

Wonder if we’ll all survive without communicating our all-important news for one whole day?

Guess we should be thankful to be able to communicate at all.