Facebook has gone well beyond its social networking predecessors; far from just posting photos, journal entries, and the barest-bone information about yourself, Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild lets you allow the whole world to know everything about your life—from the most mundane ‘Mark is sleeping’ to the highly intriguing ‘Marks is saying that love hurts.’
Love, of course, is that one thing the human populace has sought more than any other, and Facebook makes amendments for that, too. Though love might spin a tangled web, Facebook helps us make sense of it with nine little phrases. With a couple of mouse clicks, voila; you’ve updated your relationship status! In reality, however, relationship statuses are not wardrobe choices; when you begin to change statuses as frequently as you do clothes, think twice before hitting save.
Mark Zuckerberg is single…is in a relationship…is single…is in a relationship…is single.
Aside from cluttering news feeds, changing relationship statuses by the minute implies indecisiveness—unless you can procure a real-life couple who’s on, then off again every minute.
The first status change generates buzz; the second creates even more. If you want posts to flood your profile, chameleon statuses are not the way to go.
At its core, relationships serve the best proportions of moods: thrilled to take the plunge, you change your status. Regretted your hastiness, you revert to the original. After constant repetitions, no one’s going to believe whatever status you indicate.
At the end of the day, no one cares, honey. Unless someone’s a stalker, no one’s going to refresh your profile every other minute and catch your status shifts. Unfortunately, people are much too caught up in their own lives to fret over any other trivialities.
Mark Zuckerberg is engaged/married/widowed/separated/divorced.
It’s all fine and well for your Facebook friends, but what about the rest of the offline population? Email isn’t as reliable as delivering news in person; with the latter, you immediately elicit a response, and an honest one at that, since most aren’t as adept with reshaping emotions when not in front of the computer.
It is accepted that all relationships start with small steps, but it’s another thing entirely when you mess with ‘engraved’ commitments. Statuses have absolutely no bearing on the real world, and highly flexible statuses only breed mistrust.
Given such a context, chameleon statuses, if nothing else, widen the hole for errors to slip in. Accidentally clicked ‘widowed’? Try explaining that to your seven-year old daughter who’s just finished Skype-ing with her overseas worker Dad, or to your seventy-year old in-laws. How about ‘engaged’? Your tech-savvy mom might just get a heart attack.
It’s complicated.
This status has got it right; relationship statuses are complicated since you’re just limited to four words at most. Facebook doesn’t have room for long and winding explanations, which are, in any case, better for personal communications—unless you want the Facebook public to know all the details of your love lives. Lest you simultaneously trash your online and offline relationships, change statuses only when it actually does in reality.
