Sunday 22 March 2009

Poking Around

Merete Mazzarella has taken the plunge and joined Facebook. But she has some doubts:
Fast en mycket bestämd misstanke har jag: Facebook handlar egentligen inte om att umgås utan om att slippa umgås. Slippa umgås på riktigt alltså, in real life. Och att vilja umgås så man slipper umgås är inget nytt: för hundra år sen lämnade man visitkort hos varandra. Det måste vara som att 'puffa' på Facebook?
"Att puffa", we are told, is the Swedish Facebook equivalent of "to poke". And if one pokes someone who is not a Facebook "friend", one can't see their profile for a certain number of days. A penalty that's probably indeed reminiscent of visiting card etiquette, and fulfils a similar purpose.

2 comments:

Eric Dickens said...

Although I've not worked out how exactly Facebook will improve my life, the "friends" system is nice, so you can build up a kind of network of chatters.

Obviously, if you have a dynamic social life at work, theatre, pub, and sports stadium, you meet loads of people. But those of us living rather isolated lives out of choice, can indeed chat on more or less an equal basis, when we want, with people we may have far more in common with than the random people we bump into at social functions, beyond our close circle of friends.

I've been nudged into Facebook by one or two people, literary and linguistic ones. And with small groupings you can keep discussions more on-topic than some of the rambling ones you see on more open sites.

David McDuff said...

It has to be admitted that there are privacy concerns about Facebook, though, Eric. Check your email.