Two Faced

I gave in to the Facebook phenomenon last year, when two of my friends kept on pestering me to join. I eventually gave in and joined. At first I didn’t really bother with Facebook. I didn’t entirely understand what is was all about and only joined out of boredom.

Unfortunately this lack of interest wasn’t to last and like so many others the addiction started.

It is worrying that we become so obsessed with looking for old friends, colleagues, receiving messages and adding as many people as you can as friends. To be honest the majority of friends on my Facebook are just names of people I used to vaguely speak to or know. Most of which, are not what I would class as friends, but being obsessed with adding more and more people it gets to the point where you don’t even care. Sites such as Facebook, EBay, MySpace and You Tube are incredibly addictive.

My daily ritual at work is to check out all the sites for messages, photos people have added and search for anything and everything I possibly can. I’m not content with being on the net just on my breaks but during work time as well. You Tube has already being banned from our computers at work. I’m guessing it won’t be long before Facebook is blocked. I know that many of my colleagues are also logged into Facebook for much of the day. Hopefully with safety in numbers senior staff can’t demand one to ones where we are individually told off for spending too much time on the internet. To be honest the job isn’t exactly stressful and manic. What else could I do to idle away eight hours at work? Without the likes of Facebook, what would we do to get through are working days?

If companies don’t want the workers to use the internet and go onto certain websites, then they should be more proactive and ban them entirely. If we don’t have the internet we can’t then be accused of abusing it. Even with the comfort of sites like Facebook are not enough to curb the tedium that is work. If the sites are there for logging into, I will continue my day to day surfing. Facebook is an interesting source of amusement. You can add photos and galleries, you can buy your friends, send them pretend presents and treats, and you can watch videos, do quizzes and add just about anything to your profile.

I think at some stage I will probably quit Facebook and close my account. In the press there has been quite a lot of bad publicity for the site. Only last week the site organized a water fight in Hyde Park, London. The water fight got out of hand and one girl was pictured in the papers being punched by a thug, just because she threw water at him. Hundreds of police were called to Hyde Park to control the violence, as revelers took the water fight too seriously and became over aggressive. Facebook also set up ‘shanking’ on the site. You could shank someone, which meant stabbing them. In all the craziness surrounding the rise in knife crime in the UK, this is not exactly the most conducive way of getting the message across that stabbing and violence needs to be addressed and stopped.

I don’t believe Facebook will stop out careers and jobs. I think Facebook will eventually get itself banned and removed off the net before our companies do.