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January 24, 2009
Bookin' it
Facebook T-shirt, originally uploaded by BeFitt.
Pretty much everyone I know is on Facebook. It's no surprise, then, that people use the website to keep their friends updated on their lives. I've always felt, however, that really awful news should be disseminated in different ways. As this Onion article demonstrates, some news should not be broadcast on Facebook:
While checking his news feed for updates on the 438 people in his extended network Monday night, Tom Allessandro, 24, noticed that Facebook friend David Bluvband has apparently died. "Huh, I guess he's dead now," said Allessandro, adding that it seemed like only yesterday when Bluvband, a former coworker of his ex-girlfriend, posted a link to the YouTube clip of "Chocolate Rain." "Boy. That's a shame. Just goes to show you that you really have to enjoy every SuperPoke like it's your last." After an appropriate two-minute mourning period spent reviewing Bluvband's tagged photos, Allessandro clicked "Attending" for an event entitled "Lost My Cell Phone! I Need Your Numbers!!@!."
After all, you don't want to see "Bill was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer" between "Sarah is druuuuunk!" and "John got laid last night."
So, when an acquaintance of mine announced via Facebook that she had a miscarriage, my second reaction, after sadness, was "what the hell?" I know that if it wasn't for Facebook, I would never have known about the miscarriage - or about the original pregnancy. Nevertheless, I still think it's a strange place to deliver such news.
Any thoughts on this, dear readers?
entry no. 1285
Posted at January 24, 2009 10:41 PM