Facebook...Friend or Foe?

My ex's current paramour is my colleague's most watched in living color video app. I know this, not because I am a particularly gifted detective, nor because I was interested in knowing something as futile as that,  but because of the phenomenon that is FACEBOOK.

With it's new timeline, one does not even have to dig deep to know who's doing what with whom and to whom. Any app you look into once is shared. Looked at twice or more- the app, video etc..-is displayed and dare I say, even advertised as one's favorite on your main page.

That gigantic social media tool has permanently ruined the meaning of the word "Friend" and made a verb out of it. "Will you friend me on facebook?" As if the English language needs anymore help in quickly becoming a linguistic paradox.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."~ American idiom 

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

• Facebook,  has facilitated public humiliation, derision and bullying. Kenneth Weishun, Jr., a 14 year old from Iowa committed suicide on April 17, 2012 after a Facebook hate group created a page targeting him because he'd come out earlier this year. An extreme example of a nefarious use of Facebook, that still haunts me. We've all seen the headlines.

• I remember after Haiti's earthquake in January 2010, a hate group created a page titled "F*ck Haiti, let those n*gg^rs die".  It had over 3,000 fans. Sure it was taken down after reports of abuse by many, but the words once seen are not easily forgotten. 

• Facebook helped a woman in Pierce County, Washington discover that her husband was married to someone else when it's algorithms suggested that wife #1 should friend wife #2. The husband being the common Foe, the tie that bound, or in Facebook's distorted world, common "Friend". 

"The keyboard is mightier than the sword" ~ Metonym inspired by ink ;-)

•  Lost relatives find each other on Facebook. Reunions are planned daily on facebook. The documentary "Google Me" www.snagfilms.com  is about a man named Jim Kileen who went around the world meeting people with his name. What he uncovers about the vibration of a name is simply delicious. He found most of them on Facebook. 

• The dissemination of any and all ideas spread at a rapid pace on Facebook. Positive ones catch momentum just as quickly. Most recently we had the Invisible children film project Kony 2012. If we can stop Kony, that would set a tremendous precedence for social justice and Facebook will have been used at one of its highest vibration. How many had any awareness of Kony before then?

"Facebook doesn't harm, people harm" ~Nadègeism (I hope)

I compare Facebook to a gun. 

A gun is a tool with the ability to intimidate, destroy lives and harm creatures physically. Facebook is a tool that has the ability to destroy moments in time, harm friendships, relationships, question allegiances, feed obsessions. Just as the slogan, "Guns don't kill, People Kill" summarizes, I can say  "Facebook doesn't harm, people harm".

A gun has a safety feature known as a lock, meant to prevent accidents. 

Facebook has a button that allow you to block, but after an injury occurs, or a presumed "friendship goes sour", or as I see it a "friendship gets put into it's proper perspective". 

Both can be Unlocked and Unblocked. 

Whether you unlock your glock or unblock a "friend", whatever got out of the pandora box during either process can never be put away, forgotten or undone.