Why do you do what you do to me

I think privacy in the Facebook age is no longer existent. For instance, I keep getting friend requests from people I don't know, but apparently we have friends in common. But my privacy settings are as private as they can get. Yet, I probably still pop up on the right hand-side of people's Facebook page as a friend suggestion. How am I private if that's happening. I feel so violated. I didn't join Facebook to be friends with everyone. I joined it because it was a university network and it was a way to keep in touch with my uni friends since my Myspace page was super blocked.

(A side note: why do people follow friend suggestions? Do people look at friend suggestions and think "sweet, someone from high school I don't have on my friends list" and do it for points? Or do they think "I like the way they look and my friend knows them so, swish, I'm in!"? I've had people from high school try adding me that a) I never knew, b) never liked, or c) forgot. I've also had people I have no idea who they are try to add me. It's ANNOYING. Stop the friend suggestion madness!!)

Also, privacy in this age is gone in the sense that our family and friends all know what we're doing because of Facebook status updates, Tweets, blogs, etc. I can't even say "HOLY COW WHY DO I WANT TO BE FB FRIENDS WITH (enter person here)?!?!?! Denied!" without it getting back to them. You know, if my dad ever joins Facebook (or Twitter), I'm screwed. All the shit I say about him will come back to me. Like my new running joke of "Dad's quote of the day." That is funny stuff. But if he knew I was mocking him on a national stage because I was friends with him on FB, oooohhh big trouble. Even if I just posted the joke on a friend's page, he'd probably still see it. THANK BOB he's not on Facebook (or any social networking site), otherwise I really would be screwed. So, for now, I can at least enjoy some privacy with my joke.

Other than that, privacy is a joke in the modern age. Girls cannot gossip (which was evident by an incident with some MA Mag Journos a few years ago - let's just say the bully couldn't take being the victim!), boys cannot share inside jokes, sisters cannot complain about parents, and friends can't swap details for someone's surprise birthday party without someone finding out about it on the Internet. I blame Facebook for this.

I don't blame them just because they connect us all together (more or less), but because they have degraded the value and privilege of privacy on the World Wide Web. Thanks a lot assholes. You know, all those people I didn't like in high school, now they know where I am. THANKS. Only bright side is I don't have to accept their friend request. Which, that my friends, is becoming a more popular form of power than privacy.