Facebook...again

There have been many conversations on this blog about the perils and pitfalls of Facebook. I have a few more to add to the list:

Being Facebook friends with people you work with
Some people have a real issue about this. They believe their work life and their personal life should be kept entirely separate and as part of this they refuse to be Facebook friends with work friends. Which is fair enough. I personally take a slightly more relaxed stance and am Facebook friends with some work friends. I do draw the line in some cases but I figure that many of the people that I work with are really good friend of mine, and as my Facebook page doesn't contain anything highly embarrassing and I'm not going to post a status update bitching about work which will result in getting fired, it's ok to be Facebook friends with work friends.

Or so I thought. A woman I work with (who is lovely, just a little intense) added me. I was torn. On the one hand I didn't really want to add her. On the other I knew for a fact that if I didn't add her she would come up to my desk and ask why I hadn't added her. So then I thought that I could add her but restrict what she could see. But then I realised that she would again come up to my desk and ask why she could only see my limited profile. So I gave in and accepted her friend request.

Big mistake. She comments on quite a few of my status updates. Pointlessly. She's a bit like a Facebook stalker who I have to see Monday - Friday. It got worse a couple weeks ago when she came up to my desk and said: "Ben Jones". I was confused for 10 seconds until I realised that she was talking about my friend from uni Ben Jones. My friend that she can only know about because of my Facebook page. She saw that he had commented on my page and came to my desk to tell me that she thought he was good looking. Weird. Then last week she told her manager about my update about the royal wedding:

"Fenella Middleton-Brown only cares about the royal wedding if we get a day off."

She told her manager. They had a conversation about my status update. I could hear this conversation. Seriously? This woman has crossed the line. I can't dump her though. She'll ask me why. Still, on the plus side, we do get a day off for the royal wedding.

Being Facebook friends with your parents' friends
I didn't mean for this to happen. Really I didn't. It was accidental. I swear. When I was in Peru I uploaded all my photos to Facebook and sent the link to my parents. This way they could see the photos even though they weren't on Facebook. Except for some reason the link that I sent meant that if people who weren't on Facebook decided to join Facebook through my link - they were automatically my friend. Which is how I became Facebook friends with my mother. And a few of my parents' friends. OK - I may have accepted some of their friend requests as well. And my godmother who I haven't seen since I was three. Then I felt bad if I dumped then. And most of them are fine and cause no trouble. But again, there's a couple that comment way too much and need to leave me alone. One of them wished me happy birthday and called me my family nickname that is only a family nickname. For no one else. I was furious.

I really should dump them all. But then my parents might be mad.

Adding your boyfriend on Facebook
I mentioned that the White Horse and I aren't Facebook friends - well now we are. It was a couple weeks ago and we were joking that our relationship wasn't official unless we were Facebook friends. I then pretended it was a big deal to accept his friend request, it was all very amusing. We also had The Conversation where we agreed that the whole:

"Fenella Middleton-Brown is in a relationship with The White Horse"

is unnecessary and silly. So we became Facebook friends. Which resulted in:
1.) Me suddenly realising that he may have a look at my photos and one of the first ones he would see is the one that Vi mentioned - the one of me and my ex-boyfriend looking very cozy 4 years ago that someone decided to tag. I hastily de-tagged myself. It sounds ridiculous but that wasn't the first photo of me I wanted him to see. I started thinking if there were any other photos I didn't want him to see. I then told myself I was being ridiculous.
2.) I kid you not, about 10 minutes after I accepted his requested by friend text me: "so you're finally Facebook friends!" Freaky.
3.) My mother has been stalking my boyfriend on Facebook. She insists it's not stalking as he hasn't made his photos private. I insist that it's stalking if you're not friends with each on Facebook.

I may regret this decision.

Facebook is a minefield.