Facebook: the new Big Brother

The Age of the Stalker is here, friends. There is no privacy. Furthermore, we don't even WANT any privacy. We enjoy, no, thrive on sharing our innermost private secrets with a general undiscerning public. First there was Myspace, but that was a little segregated and individual, so along came Facebook to fill in the gap. And boy was there a gap. Now every activity, particularly any social activities, are recorded and commented on daily.

Society's mutual obsession with digital photography means that every bar we walk into, every house party we agree to attend, and every toke we partake, shall be visually recorded and placed online within 12 hours of it taking place. You will log on the next day and find that seven of your friends have discussed how much of a tool you really are. Oh yes, Facebook is a virtual slagger. The best place to vent out our frustrations and hate mail.

We have spent the past decade whinging and complaining about how the government is taking away our privacy, how we are constantly being monitored and controlled, (please refer to Enemy of the State, The Matrix, Eagle Eye et al) but honestly, deep down, we LOVE being watched. Because if we are being watched we are never alone. And the noughties is all about not being alone.

Yes, that's right, you with your mobile, i-phone, MSN messenger, partner tracker, GPS system, are connected to a huge technologically bound hub of paranoia where everything you say and do is universally known and announced. Just the way you like it.

A personal case in point: my friend Melvin was served by a pretty girl at Myer the other day. Her name was recorded on the receipt. "The girl who served me at Myer was pretty" he told me, and that was all it took to arouse my curiosity. I did a search for her on Facebook, and lo and behold there she was. I added her as a "friend", and an hour later she added me too. So there we are, me and the pretty girl from Myer, friends. I made a comment on her profile about her change of status from "single" to "in a relationship with [insert douchebag]". She sent me a private message - "I'm sorry, do I know you???". Aghast and lost for words, I struck gold when I saw that we in fact, by complete coincidence, shared a mutual friend. "Oh yes pretty girl from Myer, I'm friends with [insert mutual friend]." We chatted via private messages. But this was not private - I was showing all my friends and she didn't even KNOW me. She works at Vodafone at Myer she tells me (I, of course, already knew this). And so our relationship continues. I know who her friends are, what her hobbies are, what movies and movies she likes, what uni and school she went to, pretty much anything an aspiring stalker requires to track down and rape a pretty girl from Myer.

My point is not that I am a stalker. This was simply a harmless social experiment. My point is that if I WANTED to be a stalker it would not be hard. It would in fact be tremendously easy. Too easy, I feel.

So what is the lesson here? The moral of this torrid tale? Hold things close to your chest, people. Leave a little mystery. Sometimes it's best to not know everything about each other right off the bat. But then again I'm currently writing on a public blog, so who the heck am I to talk. I am a fucking hypocrite.

Over and out.