Virtual, Social, and Immortal

During the podcast, The Virtual Revolution, the comments about possible problems of young people today who actively use the Internet (...who may come to regret their actions later on), it reminded me of a story I heard from a friend about how she felt awkward about underclassmen from our highschool (who my friend had never met) 'friend request' her on Facebook. For these underclassmen, she mentioned, having a lot of 'friends' is the important part, not actual personal relations. Plus, she was a popular girl, so I guess it was all the more better for these kids to want her as a 'friend'.
The notion of (virtual and/or real-life) social status and relationships plays a big role in our lives, and as the podcast mentioned, the 'web makes us immortal' since the things we post or do on the web are preserved. The non-stop flow of information when I open Facebook annoy me at times because sometimes there are things that I do *not* want to know. For example, without thinking much, I accepted a friend request from a girl I met just once in my entire life and have never met since. To be honest, I don't know her that well (well, hardly at all), but her Facebook posts keep coming up on my page whenever I log in, as if I knew her well. It 'immortalized' our interaction from that day, unlike casual conversations I might have with a stranger which will remain as an ephemeral experience. Of course, if you ever want to meet that person again it's a problem, but to be given private (intimate) information of someone I hardly know is awkward because it is simply irrelevant to me. The 'newsfeeds' about a girl I don't really know coming up on my Facebook page is obviously because I made a 'choice' to add her as a friend. Awkward choices like the one I made, or how young people recklessly try to increase the number of 'friends' on Facebook, are examples of how the things we do online are not casual at all, but as the podcast mentioned, it is very revealing, a constant reminder of ourselves and our actions, like the recommendation engines that propose 'what you might want' based on previous purchases.