Facebook status

I like that message line at the top of my facebook profile, in which I can say, (my name!) is...

Since I first used this, it gave me a sort of different way of seeing my reality. I can get out of myself, and observe from the outside.
The thing with voicing your existential status is the audience. You need just those particular people to see it, but the problem with facebook is, it has got out of control. You have the uncle who's not that welcome at the christmas table, the gorky acquintance at work who believes he/she/it is your friend and so on.
Managing facebook is balancing on that fine line between self revelation, privacy and diplomacy. There's all this etiquette to think of as well. You can't quite refuse to be someone's 'friend', but you don't quite want that person going through your wall posts either.
I've settled for privacy and diplomacy. Meaning that I don't make wall comments, don't upload my private photo albums with my partner splashed over all my vacation pics, and don't play any of those applications that reveal that at heart, I am really a cross between Michael Jackson on a bad hair day and a dentist.
I do like my bookshelf up there though. One, it is the best place for me to keep a record of the great ones, and two, well I do want some self revelation, but in a slightly obscure way. If someone is clever enough to know that what one reads gives a pretty good idea of character, and if that someone is interested enough to dig into what I've read to do this, then probably, I wouldn't mind that so and so as a proper friend.
What I find hard to contain though is that temptation to shout aloud to the world, including my aunt's secret lover, and my 16-year old nephew's best friend who are on my 'friend' list, my existential status. That box 'so and so' is.... is unbearably tempting. I've found though, I've regretted my impulsive one liners, when on the bus, or in the shower, thinking how, for instance, that librarian-cum-IT guy I met once in Pakistan, or my ex-colleague who competed with me for my job (but we never acknowledged it) might have interpreted this. I am giving them material see, too much information, too much information.
But I do like knowing what my existential state is right now, and there is something about having it out there on the internet, instead in just my mind. But for this, I need an audience of true and intimate friends, or dead anonymity. The problem is those in-betweens.
I am settling for anonymity. I lack the courage, or lack of diplomacy to ker-bam all those nobodies off my friend-list, so I have a safe space on there again (I did have this actually, in the early face book days, the good old days).
My alternative? This blog. All you know of me, is that I am a mad gypsy woman, who's suspiciously gay. I don't mind you knowing my status. If you are (still) reading my blog, you probably are a friend (I still have not met) as well.

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