'Faith, her privates we.

So on the top of my homepage feed on Facebook, there’s this new message about privacy control. There’s been a lot of noise about Facebook and privacy lately… and I don’t know… it seems kind of dumb to me. 

Okay. Not dumb. That’s two glasses of wine articulating an adjective. Selectively chosen attention and consequential anger.

I’ve ignored most of the rants… and my mind dizzies at all the explanations in news articles. At the end of the day, I get it. Facebook is sharing information that I post online. Um… information that I, me, the person typing this very blog that will be posted within a half hour, decides to distribute across the world wide web. 

We don’t call it that much these days. I don’t know when and how we decided that the internet became a place where we can have a private room to keep secret from the world. Because if that ever was an option… I missed it. Everything on the internet is exposed. I know that there are encryption devices and security… but the people smart enough to make those things have foils smart enough to figure out how to get inside them… and yeah, anything on the Internet, I figure is at risk of going public.

Especially FACEBOOK.

It isn’t called shadowbook. Or aliasbook. It’s called facebook. So… I don’t know… my comprehension of the English language (tainted largely, no doubt by my dominant Leo look at me attitude) means something like putting one’s face out there to be seen. Oh, we can wear a mask over it. I mean, I don’t put my own face on that thing. I don’t have many photos of my current self that make me happy, so I turn to Louise Brooks and Norma Shearer and Waterhouse. But… still… I’m not an idiot. I know whatever words I type, whatever interests I post… are going to be seen. I mean… isn’t that the point? Acquiring ‘friends’ who can see my snappy 1400 character status updates and be impressed by my snarky commentary? It’s not like I get a Facebook account for myself to look at and chuckle over. I mean… really… DUH.

Nor … nor do I suffer any delusion that my puerile quest for amusing casual readers isn’t being farmed every other second. By the government. By greedy corporate strategists. By some weird voyeur that I don’t really want to think about… and yet… I know they are all there. Watching. Reading. Collecting data. Most of it is harmless. That’s what I tell myself when I keep chiming in with a new clever status or adding a book to my favorites or selecting a link to share on my page. It’s harmless fun.

But it isn’t mine. I don’t own it. I don’t own Facebook. I don’t pay… and um, hello, nothing in this world is free. Why do we have it in our heads that our daily distraction and entertainment should come at no cost to us? I’m not saying they are going to start charging us money. No, that’s another hyperbole that’s… oy. I’m just saying that the evil ‘they’ are going to take what they can for profit. How many million – billion members? Do you think ‘they’ are just going to sit by and not take advantage of it? I’m sorry. There isn’t a Santa, too.

I don’t blame ‘them.’ At the end of the day it is still MY choice to sign up for Facebook. It is MY choice to decide what to type into my profile. It is MY choice to ‘friend’ people. It’s not evil Facebook that is putting the information out there. They are just taking what I’ve already given them because I lack inhibition.