Social network

Seems like everybody is either getting married or getting engaged. This means I'm really at that age. I sometimes wonder if I should be open to public announcements more. Nobody knew I got engaged until a few months later.

The reason I'm bringing this up is I have a friend from college who just got engaged today. He's a wedding photographer now engaged to his stylist girlfriend/collaborator. Being in that business, when they announced their engagement on Facebook, it's natural that they would get a flood of positive reactions, mostly from past client couples and other wedding industry colleagues.

If B and I made an announcement like that, I wonder what reactions I would get. Social networks can be intrusive this way. Supposedly, we have a choice on the information we want to share to some 600 or 800 friends. But when something important happens in our lives that involves another person, it seems that choice is taken away from us.

Social networking websites have made relationship announcements tricky. You can't even do it without establishing who goes first. This is something B and I don't see eye to eye on.

I admit that I'm not a very good social networking website user. In fact, with my personality of preferring to observe and keeping personal affairs personal, I shouldn't even be on Facebook. B likes to make things loud and clear for everyone. He is a fan of labels while I like ambiguity. But ironically, I like to share raw personal photos while he's the careful one to show pre-selected, composed image representations of his life.

B and I agree at least on what's a use and what's an abuse of websites like Facebook. A lot of people overshare on these social networking sites, which is why I've hidden more than a few people from my news feed. There's a difference between sharing (about an awesome alien-detecting watch purchase) and rambling nonsense (the shape of your hair when you woke up this morning). I see the point though on why people think it's necessary to make announcements on Facebook. When I see expressions of pleasure, approval, even glee over someone's happy occasion (as getting engaged, having a baby, parent getting cured, etc.), it indeed makes the event even more special.

Maybe that's it. Maybe we're all just trying to get noticed to be special. I like to keep my head down, but maybe it's not the case for B. Maybe B and I deserve the attention, just this time...