June 18th, 2013

Front of Your Head Book

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Facebook Follies.

It is remarkable how much Facebook has become a part of our society. I, as well as virtually everyone I know, keep track of my friends and family via their FB pages. It’s so much faster and more convenient that calling or that quaint 20th-century activity of writing letters and paying someone to spend several days to cross the country to deliver it. Even my parents, now in their late 70s, track their grandchildren’s activities by watching their FB pages.

The downside, of course, is that it is such an octopus of notifications and information that people who really understand how to use it can watch your every move. I wonder how many people have had their home robbed because of their habit of “checking in” at places they visit and thus letting everyone on the Internet know their domicile is vacant. Or, more likely, how many people have been caught cheating (or planning to) on their significant others by not knowing which comments they leave on FB are public and which are private. I’ve heard that people have been arrested for crimes they talked about on their FB pages or Twitter accounts. (There has never been and will never be any shortage of stupid criminals.)

Some years ago, a man I know was certain his girlfriend was cheating and accused her of it regularly. She got tired of defending herself and orchestrated a phony affair with a phony person she concocted on a FB page, leaving evidence that she knew her boyfriend would ferret out. When he confronted her with the evidence, she busted him for stalking her and broke up.

Here’s an older comic of mine that (figuratively) deals with the simple problem of no longer being able to pretend you’re too busy to get together with someone when they can plainly see from your FB page that you’ve been spending plenty of time socializing with others.

And then there’s the problem of the government tracking your activities through social media. That’s another entire cargo ship full of cans of worms, entirely.

What do you think? Is Facebook and the like a curse, a blessing, or a combo pack?