I need my space from my second life on Facebook

In the past week I’ve been bitten by a zombie, challenged for my right to sail the high seas by a ninja and had a Harry Potter spell cast on me, which sounded something like “avadra kedavra.”

No, sadly enough, I don’t live in a fantasy world, though sometimes I wish I did.

This was my week on Facebook, the multimillion-user social networking site.

To tell the truth, I never wanted a Facebook site. I have always been opposed to the whole social networking thing. You’d think as a public relations major I’d be more into it, but social networking bugs me.

For instance, I consider MySpace, the Web site that made social networking popular, the next closest thing to an organized stalking unit. Finally a place was created where 45-year-old men can pose as 24-year-old college students to hit on 13-year-old girls pretending to be 18, and not get arrested by police and appear on “To Catch a Predator.” Well, at least not as fast.

I’m terrified enough of being followed by paparazzi, or as I refer to them, princess killers. My wife informed me I’m not famous enough to be followed by the paparazzi. What’s she talking about? I write a column for The Statesman. What could be more famous?

I don’t need to add stress to my life by posting everything about my life on a poorly constructed HTML haven so creepy dirt balls can hunt me down and try to post weird things on my page like: TTYL or LOL or OMG. I’m not sure when it became cool to write in acronyms, but I blame it on the über-nerds.

Since joining Facebook, my paranoia of being stalked by somebody I don’t know has increased. I’m not sure where this sense of paranoia came from. I grew up in a pretty safe community and have never been the victim of a stalker, unless I count that hazy, dark glow that follows me wherever I go. I’ve been told it’s just my shadow, but I know better.

From the moment I first used Facebook, I knew this was something that had the potential to be good but would ultimately transform itself into a clone of MySpace. I like the idea of being able to connect with people I have lost contact with. Beyond that I have very little use for the thing. I basically want to use it when it’s convenient for me instead of letting other people use it as a convenient way for getting a hold of me.

It’s like my cell phone. I bought the thing – when I say bought, I mean my mom bought – so I could call people when it was convenient for me, not the other way around. Yet people are always calling me and bugging with questions like, “Hi Seth, what’s up?” or “Where are you?” or “How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?”

That’s just getting a little too personal.

Lately my cell phone privacy has been invaded even further as I’ve started receiving junk text messages in the middle of the night. This is going way too far. I can handle a telemarketer every now and then because I can tolerate it by pretending to speak another language to them. But text-message spamming is completely out of line. I need at least one place where I can feel safe from being attacked by people I really don’t want to talk to.

Facebook is the next in line for turning something made for my benefit into a harassment center I can’t avoid. Every day I get at least one request for someone to be my friend or to approve a friend detail about me or to become a ninja or to compare myself to their top friends while writing some nonsensical message on somebody’s wall. Whenever I try to respond to any of these things, Facebook wants me to install some new application that will allow me to view these strange requests, but it will also sell my phone number to a marketing company in Detroit who will hack into my computer, steal my identity and sell it to a businessman in China who will use it to run a sweat shop for children.

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating, but the point is I don’t like how everyone harasses me with these things.

The difficult part of Facebook is that once you’re in, you have to play by the rules. It’s a catch-22 of sorts. You have to put out some information about yourself so you can get friends, but once you do that, you’ve exposed yourself to the world and anybody can learn things about you that you probably don’t want them to know.

To play by the Facebook rules, I added the Top Friends application. Since I don’t have friends, I had to break into my wife’s account and add her as a top friend just so I could fit in to the whole Facebook world. Sad, but I’ve got to fit in. I can’t be the outcast in Facebook land.

I don’t know why people prefer to trade reality for a false digital reality where anybody in the world can know everything about them, but social networks are becoming more popular than reality. People spend hours on end seeing what everyone else is doing with their lives. As more and more people jump on board, it’s going to get to the point where a person will look at his or her friends to see what they are doing and those friends will look at that person to see what they’re doing and they’ll come to the sad realization that neither of them are doing anything productive.

Talk about a problem.

All I know is I’m scared of people hunting me down using my alternate me on Facebook, so if you decide to add me as a friend, at least have the courtesy to let me know why you’re stalking me and your true age. Maybe I’ll add you as a Top Friend.

Seth Hawkins is a junior majoring in public relations. Questions and comments can be sent to him at seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu when he isn’t visiting with his psychiatrist to get over his paranoial delusions of grandeur.