How are you Facebook?

What would it be like if Facebook was an accurate representation of our lives? I look at some of my friends posts and I seriously think that they must be living the dream. Travel, love, success  - Facebook has become to my generation what Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was to my parents – except the stars of the show are not celebrities, they are my friends.

And when I say friends, I mean friends – I do not, and never will understand the people who  feel the need to become Facebook friends with every person they have ever met. The number of friends you have on Facebook or followers on Twitter is their definer of status. Or they are deluded in believing that because they met once, or were good friends 10 years ago, they are still friends now – thanks to Facebook.  

But why would you want to share with your neighbour’s friend’s, twice-removed cousin,  the joy you feel at the birth of your first child. And why would you care about the great time they had at their high school reunion?

Perhaps it’s because the picture of our lives that we paint on Facebook is the self-edited, airbrushed, PR-version that we are comfortable with the world viewing. It is not reality. We all know that life is not as great as we depict. It is not all parties and funny anecdotes  -it is the version of our lives that we allow to be seen.  So since it is not going away anytime soon, I want to ask -  is there really anything wrong with that?

After all, is it any different to how we are face to face. The typical greeting usually includes – “How are you?”  How honest are we when we answer that question? I suppose the difference between answering that question and updating our status is that we can change the response depending on who we are speaking with. The way I answer “How are you?” when my best friend asks, can be quite different to how I answer the person behind the check-out. Especially if things are not going so well.

In fact, that is how a lot of people treat Facebook – it is not a moment to connect with their friends, they are just saying how great everything is to the person behind the checkout – and they only answer when everything is great. Their silence is equivalent to saying “fine”.

There are also those awkward posts, which I would compare to being the person behind the check-out innocently asking “How are you”, and the response is “I am great. I am totally in love with my husband right now. He is my whole world and I can’t imagine life without him.”  Ok…That’s nice.

Although I am glad to know that my friends are in love, or really missing one another, I can’t help but feel like I am witnessing a reality TV show starring my friends, or peering through a window to view an intimate moment. Yet it is a moment that they have invited me into. But that just makes it even weirder. (What did people do to publically declare their love before Facebook?)

Asking “How are you?” is often weird in itself. Most of the time, you don’t really want to know how I am. You are just trying to segue between saying ‘hello’ and asking another question, or desperately trying to find something to talk about. You can tell when someone is doing this, and when they genuinely want to know how you are.

I find it annoying to have to say “fine” if things are not fine,  but I know the person does not really want to know how I am. If you are going to ask how I am, shouldn’t you be prepared for the possibility of me saying, “Terribly actually – I had a fight with my husband last night, took it out on the kids this morning and I just want to cry in my pillow right now. But don’t worry about that, now on to last quarter’s KPIs.”

So why can’t we be honest? If I suddenly have a cramp in the nether regions the moment you ask how I am –  can’t I tell you that? And if telling you that is not acceptable, why are you forcing me to lie by asking a question when you do not really want to know the answer?

The answer to that question is obvious – at some level, we all know when asking “how are you” is genuine and when it isn’t. If we have a reasonable amount of social-awareness, we know when it is acceptable to be honest and when we should be token in our responses.  We know the people, circumstances and subjects we can be honest with and when it is best to draw a veil.

In the same way, I am pretty sure we all know that life is not full of the perfect family outings that our friends post, but we are still learning the appropriate times to draw the veil on Facebook.