The new n’etiquette

Flynn Daunt
Science & Technology Editor
Facebook is still trying to find its place within our social culture, and it often clashes with our own ideas of friendship and social space.
For instance, how many so-called friends on Facebook do you really consider close friends? Probably a handful, and the rest are likely people with whom you have a loose affiliation in some way. Yet these people, whom you might consider acquaintances, may seem interesting for one reason or another.
Going on a Facebook friend-deleting spree like the one late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel suggested on November 17 doesn’t make sense. He reasoned the term “friend” in the Facebook context is cheapening the value of friends, and that having anyone you come across, no matter how important they are to you, deemed a “friend” takes away from the meaning of friendship.
Kimmel seems to think his audience and Facebook users cannot tell the difference between someone with whom they have an affiliation on Facebook and someone who will help you move a couch on a Saturday morning.There are other issues linked to the thin threads of the social network. Facebook etiquette has gotten to be a tricky business these days.
How many times have you had someone that you barely know complain that you have not added them to Facebook?Facebook could give you the option of having a separate friends list for people who are your close friends, but, inevitably, this would inspire many “friends” to take offence, as Dan Ardona, second-year English major, puts it.
“I seriously think people might be offended that, you know, why am I not in your best friends list, and why am I just in your acquaintance list? […] I think it might just complicate things further than it should,” said Ardona.
People need to start thinking of Facebook not really as a list of friends, but as a self-updating blog that lets you see information from those people you find somewhat interesting. Facebook, however, is trying to be more than just this now, complicating its role in the social structure.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of Facebook, recently stated he believes Facebook would take over the role of instant messaging, because Facebook prioritizes your private messages in order of how much you talk to your friends. The problem with this idea is that a Facebook private message means something different than an email. Would you give your boss or professor a Facebook message? Probably not.
The topic is so confusing and perplexing that there’s even a Nov. 30 workshop at York that tries to draw the line on online etiquette and examines whether or not students and professors should be Facebook friends.We are still working on and creating a sense of internet rules, but there is a special set of unwritten rules for social networking. This whole new form of conversing and interacting is still phenomenally new, and as the technology grows, so, too, will our rules for using it. For now, I propose a few ground rules.
One, people really shouldn’t worry too much about what constitutes a friend on Facebook or otherwise. Two, if you find someone you barely know on Facebook who doesn’t post anything relevant, just delete them. Three, if you find someone hasn’t added you to their Facebook friends, don’t take offence. Last, and most importantly, never, ever add your mom to Facebook.
With files from Brandon Lorenzetti