Erstellt am: 2. 2. 2009 - 17:07 Uhr
The Cyber Minefield
Did you see Roger Federer break down in tears after losing the final of the Australian Open yesterday? It left me feeling distinctly moist-eyed myself.
If I could have written the script, I’d have sent his girlfriend Mirka Vavrinec hurdling over the stands to embrace him. He'd bury his tearful face on her shoulder, she'd cry too and pat his back and whisper something in his ear, and a sentimental sound-track would strike up on the stadium's PA system.
Luckily for everyone perhaps, I wasn't able to direct the scene, yet I still felt the need make some gesture. I wanted to express all my admiration of big Roger as a man and as a player. I wanted to touch on all those memories I had of giving everything and more in tennis finals and still losing. I wanted him to know I understood the pain of listening to stupid old men make long speeches when you just want to be alone under a cold shower. And I wanted to show my approval of his emotional honesty.
So I went to Facebook and became his 674,157th fan.
It just seemed the natural thing to do.
New Spirit of Exhibitionism
I don’t know why I now feel the urge to share my likes and dislikes on the 150 million strong social networking site. Since I spent the hours between 3 and 5 on Saturday morning debating enthusiastically whether music tracks were “timeless" or simply “good", the truthful answer might be that I just have too much time on my hands.
But since I joined Facebook in autumn I have become addicted to revealing some fascinating pearls of information about the state of my soul. I have been slowly peeling away my natural aura of mystique like the layers of an onion. Now, for example, my cyber-chums know that I’m officially a fan of 90’s rock band Pavement, extreme skier Glen Plake, and, of course, I am one of the hundreds of thousands of web-geeks who are fans of tea.
A new spirit of exhibitionism has overcome my typical British reserve. I force everyone to look at my dog. People who in real life I’ve never told my middle name can now look at pictures of my fragile week-old niece. In my initial rapture at becoming an uncle for the first time, I was about to show everyone a photo of her cutely suckling on my sister's boob, before good taste and a remembrance of the rules of Facebook halted what would have been a crass faux-pas.
Harmless Pleasure?
It’s all a pretty innocent but fatuous way to spend my time.
Facebook keeps me out of the public houses and, for an exile like me, it’s a fun way of keeping in touch with old friends abroad. As you can surely imagine, it’s a rich treat for people that I have loved and left somewhere between northern England, Paris and Africa to find out, via my Facebook status update, that their old pal still can’t spell or type and continues to harbour a weakness for the Japanese cartoon version of Heidi.
But, in my enthusiasm for publicizing details about my habits and tastes, privacy campaigners think that I’m at best a commercial guinea pig and at worst a prize chump.
Facebook is naturally an advertising company’s dream. Its technology allows advertisers to specifically target the tastes of their potential customers. As a 29-year old official fan of Roger Federer, Wayne Rooney and skiing, you’d be amazed at the amount of sporty things I get to peruse when I log on. And just for the record, dear advertisers, I am entirely satisfied with the state my 'abs' and don't have any desire for a melanoma-endangered six-pack.
And this advertising-dream will go much further in 2009. If I want to, I can do for free the job that advertising companies used to spend thousands of dollars on hiring focus groups to do. I can express my digital approval or disapproval of their commercials and tell the site exactly what I did and didn’t like about them.
The recruitment website Careerbuilder.com used its trial Facebook polls to ask people what they thought of the advert that was played during the coverage of the 43rd Super Bowl.
No wonder that the 24 year old founder of facebook Mark Zuckerberg (great name) was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And no wonder he turned up in a tie!
I'm no monkey
But the advertisers won’t make a monkey of a clever guy like me, of course. I’m going to fool them by indicating a passion for golf sweaters, pipe-smoking, Fishing Monthly magazine, the novels of Jane Austin, FC Altach, 1970’s Kraut-rockers Neu and Austria’s Skinniest girl, or whatever that show's called. And wrestling. Hemingway AND Proust. And Jean-Claude Van Damme and Japanese Nouvelle Vague. That'll confuse them! No firm is going to put me in their little box. I will be - what's the word? - enigmatic. I'll be an enigmatic man of eclectic tastes.
And, like every cautious credit-card holding character, I've obviously lied about my exact birthday.
Seitenblicke
But then there are more pressing privacy issues. I keep getting tagged and broadcast on photos taken of my wrong side (that’s every side, by the way). I have taken this all in good humour, seeing it as an annoying but good preparation for my future life as a paparazzi-hounded celebrity. But I know of one relationship that was ruined by suspicions which sprouted irrevocably after my friend was tagged looking with drunken puppy-eyes at a girl in a cocktail dress at a party.
The affronted girlfriend saw the longing in that look (to me, and I know him well, it looked more like tequila-induced daze than a desire-based love-light) and assumed their 50 'mutual friends' would see it too. “How could you humiliate me like that?" she asked, before handing the poor fellow his portfolio.
He no longer is involved with social networking sites of any shape or form.
Then last month the world found out that my roguish countryman Prince Harry was single, when Chelsy Davy flagged it up on her Facebook page. Her ‘friends’ leaked it to the media and the tabloids made millions with their headlines. A man recently killed his wife after she turned her status back to ‘single’- Ok, now I’m descending into chronic “Chronik".
Minefield
But I spent last week trying to persuade one of my best friends from University to join Facebook (via old fashioned Email) so it would be easier to keep in touch and see his photos.
“I would, mate," he said, “But it’s a minefield."
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