Too much information....

Facebook is turning us all into narcissists.

I read that in a magazine a few days ago and it made me think quite hard about whether that's true or not and sadly I think it is. We all bash out our status updates often sharing things that we would never have dreamed of a few years back, to a bunch of our 'friends' most of whom don't give a rat's bum that "David is tired" or "Christine has just spent her entire salary in the sales! LOL ". What if no-one comments on your status? Shock horror!! Maybe you're not interesting anymore??! What if your 'friends' are deserting you!?

I cannot get high and mighty on this as I am possibly the world's worst at sharing far too much information. Work sucks right now. I'm not the only one - far from it. But is shouting out how much your boss is getting on your nerves or how much you have to do before Friday really the most productive way of getting it out of your system? Whatever happened to having a drink with a girlfriend and bitching about your jobs? Or going home and having a little rant to your significant other before settling down for a cuddle on the sofa and ignoring all the crap just for a few hours before you dive back in the next morning.

I think we all like to believe that our cyber-'friends' all care about our feelings as much as we do and that simply is not the case. And why should they? They all have their own lives and feelings to worry about. Of course they care about your wellbeing and if you were truly having some sort of breakdown then they would be on the phone like a shot but if you were having a proper breakdown, I'm pretty sure that Facebook wouldn't be the first place you'd advertise it.... although maybe I'm wrong... who can forget the twitter feed that went viral when an American woman tweeted....

I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f*****-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.

Lovely. I'm sure we all feel better for knowing that. I'm still trying to decide if that is worse that the executioner who tweeted details of how he'd just prepped someone for their final moments. Is nothing sacred?!!

I LOVE Facebook though. It is such a useful tool on so many levels but I think we all (including me) need to chill a little. Let's go back to using that (and Twitter) for the purpose it was originally intended. For catching up with our friends ... not our 'friends' . I love the fact I can see piccies of my friends' new offspring when I know that I won't get the chance to see them in person for quite a while, it's great that we can arrange birthday parties and drinks with a simple 'invitation/event' function and I like the fact we can take the mickey out of each other's terrible photographs and daft status updates as a brief escapism during a lunch break or on a boring commute.

C'mon admit it, how many times have you seen someone's status flash up and you've rolled your eyes or thought 'TOO MUCH INFORMATION!' ? We've all done it and to be honest I've re-read some of my statuses and cringed. Hey ho. I'm sure I'll learn one day. In the meantime I might just take a step back and re-read my updates first before I hit send ... just in case!