What has facebook done to me

When you are in a room full of people, do you just blurt out whatever thoughts are going through your mind? I should hope not. You know in movies when you can 'hear' a person's thoughts? "She is wearing way too much make up". "That dress is hideous". "Wow did she lose weight?". It's a good thing in real life people can't just hear your thoughts.

So why then do people feel the need to share every little thought they have on facebook? Facebook is just like a room full of people. Anyone can read your status, comment on it, and 'like' it. People write dumb things like, 'wow I love coffee I could drink 10 cups a day". Or, "There's nothing like the pain of getting your eye brows tweezed." (Okay that was my status.) Or just, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" Now why would we want to 'hear' you scream?

See here's the thing: facebook statuses enable people to share stuff with other people. Like to tell them you are engaged, that your sister had a baby, that the sky is really blue and the grass is green. But people use it and abuse it and write whatever dumb thoughts come readily to mind.

I'm afraid I too have fallen prey to this phenomenon. I find myself under pressure to write a good status instead of (gasp) leaving it blank. So I end up writing something stupid like "I got a haircut", and "one more week..."

Tonight I went to my friend's sister's lechaim. (Mazal tov). When I got back I wrote something as my status, half joking, and someone commented on it and wanted to know why I wrote that, was I joking, it was weird and seemed so wrong for 'a girl my age' to write that, even as a joke.

For a second I felt robbed. Like someone reached into my brain, ripped out my private thoughts, and colored all over them with markers. I felt violated, like why can I not think whatever I want without you commenting on it, don't I get any privacy anymore?

Until I realized that this was my own doing. I myself have laid my "dirty laundry" out there for the world to see, to 'like', and to comment on. So why am I complaining?

I deleted that status. It has taught me a lesson that some things are meant to be kept private, not all thoughts have to be shared, and it's okay to leave a status blank.

Sometimes I get so sick of facebook and want to just delete it. But for now it stays.

Oh, and how come after all these years 'facebook' is still considered a misspelled word??