In Your Facebook

After weeks of nagging, my sister has finally convinced me to set up a Facebook page, though I'm still not sure why. Apparently it's good for getting in touch with people, but I have to say, two hours in, I'm already fed up with it.

Not only does my email keep buzzing with constant update notices, but the whole thing seems just a bit too invasive. I'm not sure I really want the entire world to know my work and education history, to know the ins and outs of my relationship status or to judge how raucous my parties look. I know you have to accept people as friends before they can see everything, but you'd feel pretty rude rejecting them and anyway, any old Tom, Dick or Harry can see a fair bit of your profile with just a random viewing. To be honest, it unsettles me.

That might sound odd coming from someone who blogs nonsense on a regular basis and posts it up on the worldwide web, but bizarrely, there's an anonymity about this that I find rather reassuring. No one would know this was me unless I told them, so I feel a freedom to say exactly what I want, safe in the knowledge that my boss or brother-in-law or mother aren't going to stumble across my most gormless musings. I realise that Facebook is designed for messaging and networking, rather than blogging, but it's still weird that some berk you once shared a bench with in woodwork class can have the same access to intimate information about your life as your dearest friends and family.

The fact that my Facebook page identifies me exactly and gives people who know, or know of me, a glimpse into my personal life is actually rather unappealing. And then of course, once they've seen your page, they can attempt to get in touch with you. And they'll know you've seen their message. Although most of us are guilty of losing touch with genuine friends through laziness or circumstances, in which case resources like Facebook could prove invaluable to rebuilding those relationships, there are plenty of people who pass through your life and go straight out the other side, leaving no void behind them whatsoever.

Of all the hundreds or thousands of people you've met over the years, there's probably a very good reason why you've only kept in touch with, say, five per cent of them. There might be a few lost gems that have slipped through your fingers - last year, I was contacted by an old schoolfriend who had seen an ancient entry of mine on Friends Reunited (remember them?!) and, miracle of miracles, she was one of the very few old classmates whom I had actually thought about and missed since our days of giggling over scrawled willies in RE. But let's face it, those sorts of people will compose maybe one per cent of the extras in the story of your life. The remaining ninety-four per cent will be a random collection of Nice Enough But Unremarkables, Complete Dullards and Monumental Bell-Ends That You Couldn't Stand At The Time So Why The Hell Would You Want To See Photos of Their Fat, Troll-like Children Now?

If I want to see a cat in a maid's outfit, I'll abuse my own pets. And that brings me to the two most tedious aspects of the whole Facebook phenomenon. Firstly, the photos. Everyone's walls are packed with images of them living like a celebrity - photos of fancy dress parties, photos of 'wild' trips to nightclubs, photos of them posing on top of Mount Everest, photos of them looking cool in sunglasses and cowboy hats. Choosing a profile picture posed a conundrum, as I am happy to use any photo as long as it doesn't have me in it. I'd rather stick up an image of Rose West drinking a fishbowl cocktail and claim it was me on my latest wacky summer in Ibiza, then force my fizzog on the world.

Fortunately, my sister took that job off my hands by forwarding a photo of my husband and I wearing hilarious comedy antlers, taken last Christmas and it's as bad as any I'll find, so I stuck it up. But once I've exhausted my honeymoon photos and a few grainy snaps taken on various drunken nights out in the unremarkable bars that infest my home town, I'll have nothing to put up. I'm 30 years old and a square - I don't go clubbing anymore. I've never fancied bungee jumping or snow boarding and I certainly won't be spending an evening flashing my knickers at Dane Bowers in Chinawhite any time soon. And I don't think pictures of what I actually do with my time - rearranging my book shelves, falling in mud while out on country walks and tearing out chunks of hair while trying to force a book into existence - will make a particularly thrilling profile. To make my picture wall fit the Facebook model, I'll have to lie and stage a Green Card-style photo shoot in which I pretend to be someone else, with an entirely different life. And to be honest, I can't be bothered.

The second horror of this virtual social life is, of course, the dreaded Friend Count. I saw an excellent episode of South Park just the other night, in which everyone went crazy over having hardly any friends online, completely losing sight of the fact that the more time you spend scouting for cyber pals, the less likely you are to actually have many friends in the real world. The guy with the most Facebook friends of all is probably called Eric, lives with his mother and smells faintly of Bovril.

In short, I just can't be bothered with it. I never thought I'd say that text and email is a more socially adept way of keeping in touch than anything, having bemoaned in the past the demise of phone calls, letters and face to face interaction. But at least the above technological developments are private - if you forget about Big Brother of course, but he's looking for terrorists, so probably takes only a passing interest in whether Sharon's sleeping with Dave and how your piles are getting on. I'm not sure I want that creepy girl from accounts that I worked with briefly six years ago to know I'm having a party and realise she's not invited. Worse, I don't want to find out I haven't been invited to her party. The bitch.