Your Fake Name on Facebook is Annoying

OK, here's the deal. Facebook, to me, exists to create the most opportunity for light engagement with people with the least investment of effort. It's not for maintaining close friendships. It's not for proving that you care about people. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. It's there so that I can keep up with people and maintain some small relationship with them that I wouldn't be willing to overcome barriers of distance across space and time to overcome. I want to be able to keep up with people that I don't care enough about to actually keep up with, and I want to provide others the same opportunity. I know that the girl with whom I hung out in a few classes and at parties doesn't give two shits about making an effort to hang out with me. I don't mind that, just like she shouldn't mind that I don't care. Facebook gives us the chance to not have to put any effort in. A problem is being solved here.

The wrench, though, is thrown in when you obscure who you are. If you have a fake name on there, I have to work to figure out who you are, even if that's only clicking on your name to see your face. If you've got a fake name and a picture that isn't you, well fuck it, I probably don't care enough to figure it out unless there's an inordinate amount of contact going on. The same goes for people who just have pictures that aren't of them, too. I don't remember everyone's name out of context, especially when names keep changing as you people seethe all over each other marrying and divorcing and dropping puppies and whatever else you're doing out there. This goes for pictures of your children, by the way. They may have become a huge part of your identity, and that's great. They're still not your fucking face. unless you've had some weird surgery.

Here's how I see it, though. When you've got a fake name and fake picture, what you're doing is expecting me to keep straight who you are. I think, then, that you're probably being a jerk, especially if you change it often. Take that shit back to MySpace.