I got sucked into the sub-culture known as facebook several months ago. I had this creepy feeling about it, but after a while got used to finding out everyone's updates, sharing links, and posting pictures.
It also relieved some of my laziness in sending photos of the kids around to family and friends, or giving short updates. And being able to connect with other cool writers, bloggers and editors has been an added bonus.
But tonight I was reminded of the creepiness of facebook.
Not because of a breech of privacy, or the annoying "share this with friends" feature on every freaking application you install. It's just that it puts you into a little world where those you don't know all that well anymore, or perhaps don't agree with politically, can get all riled up about things you say.
Then you have try to ignore strange rhetoric from others on the other end of the political spectrum. (Or what seems strange to me since I don't actually hang out with some of these people who may or may not be related to me.) In fact, I think that's the general facebook etiquette. If someone says something political you completely disagree with, you ignore it. Well, at least that's always been my policy.
Yet alas, tonight I gave in. I told off a conservative extended family member for his bigotted ways (he'd been a little harassing with comments on my status).
Mostly because of my desperate attempt to procrastinate using anything...anything possible, rather than finish a difficult article I'm writing. Me being a snarky bitch, I'm pretty sure I now have one more (semi)relative who probably feels a need to pray for the big-government-loving, freedom-fry-hating liberal of the family.
Oh well.