I Always Feel Like...Somebody's Watching Me

Meg has asked me a number of times to join Facebook, and I remain strangely silent on the matter.

In fact, numerous people have asked me to join Facebook, including powerful administrators who insist I make a Facebook page for my at risk students to join. Because they like to be on the forefront of technological trends, or at least appear to be. I remain super hesitant.

For one thing, I don't like my internet life and my IRL to intersect. If I were on Facebook, I couldn't be Dante's Virgil. I'd have to be First Name, Last Name. I'm pretty sure with Facebook, I can't be wonderfully psuedonymous, which is what I want to be. I like saying what I want to say when I want to say it. Under the guise of my Internet ID, I can do that. I just have to not give too many details. It feels like Facebook would somehow set me up to "get caught" or something. It creeps me out.

Then there is the issue of what to do with students who look you up on Facebook. I have to maintain some sort of professionalism (what little there is left) with them. Some profs I know won't "friend" them, but will let them add on in some other way (I have no idea how this works, so just consider it secondhand information, or something). Students ask me about Facebook all the time. I just don't feel like I could be "real" if I felt they were always watching. I guess. I don't go have a beer at places I know they'll be. This feels like the same thing to me. I don't know what's sadder, that I'm "hiding" from students, or that I consider the internet to be like a bar.

Facebook also has noteriety as one of the fastest rising ways for the university to check up on you. Go google it and see how many stories you turn up about the university using Facebook to expel college students for various reasons. Some of my students are in trouble for posting pictures of themselves drinking beer in their dorm rooms -- one just got kicked out of the dorms for it. Their floor leaders are busy snooping their MySpace and Facebook pages and writing them up. I would feel terrible if they were linked to my page and then somehow somebody else (like an administrator, who definitely would be looking at this "at risk" group page) followed them over to their page and busted them for something. It really gnaws at my sense of personal rights, I guess. I'm loathe to do even the group page.

So, I won't be on Facebook any time soon. My co-worker, on the other hand, the new guy, is totally into a Facebook page for them. So, I might have him set it up so that I can also run the page. But my own personal one? Nah. Not happening.

-- DV

OK, because consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, I've actually changed my mind. I'm on there as Dante's Virgil. I can't promise how active I'll be, though. Gah. I am NOT mixing my internet life with my personal name. Not yet, anyway.