Facebook Stalking at it's Finest

For the first week of February I observed my good friend Nick*. Nick is an avid Facebook user. Thanks to Facebook’s new handy-dandy, won’t-go-away-even-if-you-want-it-to “Recent Activity” tracker, I can see on Nick’s wall that every day he comments on and likes friends photos, wall posts and links as well as wall posting himself. Additionally, on a daily basis Nick updates his status. Examples of some of his status updates include:

-Feb 1: Thank you Joe Mauer! Hometown Hero for 10 years!! (4 people like, 2 comments)

-Feb 3: BO OWNS IZZO (3 people like)

-Feb 4: There should be a “Worst Album of the Year” award at the 2011 Grammys so Lil’Wayne’s “Rebirth” can actually win something. They should extend his jail sentence for distributing shit disguised in an album case (6 comments)

-Feb 7: Go Colts! Go #59 Ramon Humber, bring a ring back to CP baby!!! (1 like)

Nick is the admin or creator for many events, including a current one that has 600+ guests who responded attending and 900+ maybes. He has 1,722 tagged photos, 95% of which are him hanging out with friends from college, 50 added albums and 115 profile pictures, including many funny/bad pictures of friends on their birthday with the caption “Happy 21^st _____!” He is a fan of 44 pages, but most are musicians (Nick is very into music and joins these pages to get early updates on new releases and tour dates).

All of that activity is fairly normal. I’d say that for a college student with a pretty light credit load, he might use Facebook a little more than average, especially the frequency that he updates his current statuses and the number of pictures tagged. However, in terms of how he uses the social networking site, which is mostly to share funny links or post jokes and communicate with friends, is completely normal.

The one area where I would say Nick is reveals more of his personal life than most people is on his profile. Many people pick and choose which questions they’d like to answer and show restraint on how many interests or favorites they reveal. Nick shows no such restraint. He lists about 50 interests, 40 favorite artists, 25 favorite TV shows, 30 favorite movies and, humorously, only 3 favorite books. The section where Nick really gets person is his favorite quotes. He has 15 favorite quotes. Some are funny quotes from friends; some are song lyrics and others are very personal and telling about his feelings and emotions, including a quote that is obviously about a girl that he liked. Lastly, on his “About Me” he has a list of people in his life who have passed away, followed by “Miss You All.” Included in this list are family members, friends and the victims of the college campus shootings in 2007 and 2008 and the Minnesota Bridge Collapse victims. He is very defensive of his choice to list these people who have passed away on his Facebook. To me, I think that Facebook is not an appropriate place to put something so serious and private. Amidst the jokes and funny comments, such a personal matter seems inappropriate and out of place. Overall, I think Facebook is a place to connect with friends, share photos and kill time. Your profile is a way to display yourself but revealing too much is too emotionally revealing.

PS- I feel officially creepy for having so in-depth stalked a good friend.