Swimmer One: Comments

Get out of my Facebook

There was a brilliant story in Scotland on Sunday at the weekend about a Scottish businessman who had £30,000 stolen from his bank account, all because of Facebook. He was, apparently, boasting about his expensive car and fabulous holidays on his profile page, so some fraudsters sent him a message pretending to be from Facebook and asking for personal details, like his date of birth and email address. He gave them the information, and they hacked into his bank account and took his money.

There have been loads of stories like this in the papers in the past year, as the media has gradually woken up to the huge popularity of Facebook (64 million users worldwide, still much fewer than MySpace but catching up fast). There was another one recently, also in Scotland on Sunday, about how ‘radical British Jihadist groups are using Facebook and other social networking sites to recruit members and distribute extremist literature!’ I love the idea of Islamic radicals posting bulletins on Facebook. ‘What are you doing now? I am planning a Jihadist terror campaign.’ ‘Hasib Hussain and Mohammad Sidique Khan are now friends.’ ‘You have been poked by Shehzad Tanweer.’ Etc.

Scotland on Sunday, in particular, seems slightly obsessed with Facebook. Its magazine recently ran a feature, headlined Social networking site or corporate invader of privacy?, which summarised the issues pretty well, although it was striking how many people whose lives had been negatively affected seemed like victims not of Facebook, but of their own vanity, naivety or stupidity. If they hadn’t got themselves into trouble via Facebook, they surely would have found some way to do it in the real world.

The problem with Facebook, ultimately, is that it is a new form of communication whose rules of etiquette are still unclear. This is why Stephen Fry, a man famous for his intelligence and sophistication, could be naïve enough to set up a Facebook page and then be surprised when he was bombarded with 150 friend requests every day. It also explains how spectacularly tactless people can often be on Facebook - you often hear tales of people discovering they have been dumped by a girlfriend or boyfriend when their partner’s profile suddenly describes them as ‘single’.

I’d avoided Facebook until recently. I already have the Swimmer One MySpace page to talk to people online about music. That has a function - to meet likeminded musicians and, more to the point, to help sell us some CDs. By contrast, I felt very unsure what Facebook was for, beyond replicating what I was already doing in real life. I ended up joining, in the end, solely because my cousin had just had a baby and my sister, who is already on Facebook, told me she’d posted photos there. I could just have emailed her, I suppose, but I was curious, so I signed up. I’ve spent most of my Facebook time since fretting about my motives for being there, and about whether I should accept friend requests from people I don’t know that well. A big issue for me is that Facebook completely removes any sense of hierarchy in friendships. Someone is either your friend or they are not, and once they are they can look at whatever text or pictures you post on your website. Someone I met once at a party has as much access to information about my life as my sister.

I am uncomfortable with this. In real life, friendship is far more complicated. I have 14 Facebook friends now, and they range from my closest friends to people I barely know. They include one or two people I would share my most intimate secrets with, and people I just run into occasionally and talk to about music, art or theatre. What sense does it make to group them all together, as if at a dinner party? Quite a few of the people who have requested to be Facebook friends with me have hundreds of ‘friends’. Some people, I have heard, treat Facebook as a kind of popularity contest, a chance to show off how many people they know. I am already thinking that 14 friends is far too many. I got a friendship request the other day from a New York PR person who I barely know at all, but who I have met professionally a couple of times. I rejected it. I felt weird about it, rude even, but it just felt wrong to put him in the same online group as my family and closest friends.

Am I unusual? Far too wary, closed-off and distrustful? Am I taking Facebook too seriously? Maybe. It’s not as if I have posted much personal information on Facebook anyway (almost none, in fact). People I know who have hundreds of Facebook friends - just because, over time, they have linked up with lots of people they have met at parties or through work - say simply that if you don’t want lots of people to read your personal information, you don’t have to post any of it. Facebook is what it says on the tin, they say - a social networking tool. They just network more than I do, for professional reasons as much as anything else. Fair enough. Then again, I have a page for that already, on MySpace. As a musician, that’s the only networking tool I need. And when I reject offers of ‘friendship’ on MySpace I don’t worry about people taking it personally, because usually it’s from a crap indie band I’ve never even met.

Ultimately, I suppose, it’s about control. Every time a Facebook friend posts a picture of me, or a comment about me, ALL of my Facebook friends can see it. If I have only a few select Facebook friends, that’s not an issue, and it’s not as if I’m doing anything particularly embarrassing anyway (although I did dress up as Venus Williams last weekend, which will probably end up online somewhere), but the idea of hundreds of people being given the same regular updates about my life makes me squirm. I’d feel like one of those celebrities who has their PR alert the gossip mags every time they go out in a fabulous dress (and then, probably, grumbles about invasion of privacy when they don’t like the pictures).

But then perhaps the point of Facebook is that it makes everyone into a celebrity, just like reality TV has. Now that celebrity has become so devalued as a currency - you don’t have to do anything of note to be famous now, just be shameless enough - why shouldn’t absolutely everyone get to be famous, at least for a few people? A Facebook page is your own personal issue of Hello magazine, all about you, and full of terrific positive stories and flattering pictures. The trouble is, every other Facebook page is a rival publication. Who knows when you’re going to end up with your cellulite showing in the Facebook page equivalent of Heat, with everyone staring at you?

So I may be leaving Facebook soon. It seems slightly pointless checking on my page in order to keep tabs on such a small group of people that I could do it just as easily - and less lazily - by email or phone. I see most of them regularly anyway. If I stay on Facebook, I worry that I’ll end up spying on their page to find out what they’re up to instead of talking to them.

But I’m undecided. Someone I know recently put a post on Facebook announcing that he was recovering from alcohol poisoning. As a result, he got concerned phone calls from his friends in the real world. That seemed a nice, useful function for Facebook. Maybe, the next time I’m ill, I’ll post that on Facebook, and then I’ll find out who my real friends are.

On a musical note, National Theatre, the Swimmer One song, is sort of about this. Just in case you were wondering.

Andrew

UPDATE, 6 JULY - I now have 39 Facebook friends. How did that happen? I am a Facebook whore. Oh well…

Permalink • Save in De.li.cious

I’m using facebook but it seems that I can’t even make friends to other countries.Friendster helps me a lot and can share many things. And also I like myspace

Posted by lovelydian on 04/18 at 12:41 PM
Hi Andrew,

I never heard about fraudsters using facebook to target their victims, thanks for the info. But it got me thinking that social networking sites like facebook, friendster and myspace makes it a bit easy for personality thieves and in fact, these sort of sites are haven for skilled fraudsters out there.

I don’t have a Facebook account. I only have an inactive Friendster account which I created when I was still in college and it was a novelty back then to have an account. I have about 200 friends which comprise my family and college friends. But I don’t go about competing to have the largest network of friends. I think that is purely silly. And I don’t accept invitations from unknown people.

Well I would say sites like facebook is good for people who wants to publicize their life. For recluse people, it doesn’t hold much worth. Does facebook have a setting where you can “lock” your account and that people who aren’t your friend can’t gain access to it? Friendster has this, which I think is pretty handy.

Regards
Michelle
Car Leasing

Posted by Michelle on 05/16 at 05:35 AM
I’m with you. The only reason I’m on is to share photos because it’s much easier since ‘everyone’ else is on it.

I also make the same mistake you did with accepting friend requests from ppl at work that I barely know… bugger! how do I block them without them knowing?

Facebook in my mind is just the flavour of the year. Last time it was MySpace, before that Friendster, before that AOL, etc., etc., things will eventually come full circle and we’ll find that we can actually keep in contact with real friends face to face :D

--
Jerry
Mouse Cursors

Posted by Jerry on 05/20 at 12:02 AM
Aye, Andy I’m with you mate.....listen I bought a widescreen tv with your credit card last week....if it turns up do a post on here and i’ll come down and pick it up. Cheers A. Eaton.

Posted by Andrew Eaton on 05/20 at 11:14 AM
I totally agree with you.

WAR Universe

Posted by War on 07/03 at 10:01 PM

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