How Facebook is making friends obsolete by Julia Angwin

I use Facebook pretty regularly. It's no question it has changed our social structure, but in the context of Facebook - only if you let it. The author speaks of privacy issues while using Facebook and how it has served as a substitute for intimacy. I disagree. I consider myself a private person but also a boldly open one, in my opinion there is no other way to live, than fully - and this means being as open about the good things as you are with the bad. After a heart wrenching break-up that left me immobile and in one of the darkest depressions I have experienced so far, I painted Facebook with saddest of bad poetry, uninspiring personal updates, rude comments, you name it. If I was feeling it, I posted it, and I was feeling pretty bad. I have no regrets, because that was my life at that time, and it was very, very, painfully real, and as a result, so were my posts. I believe a lot of times Facebook is a superficial facade that only boasts of it's user's meals, drunken parties, sunny bike rides and big paychecks or a new dress - I am certainly guilty of this as well. I think the argument of no privacy with Facebook is ridiculous. If you don't want people to know about something, then don't post it - and there are always personal messages one can send in the place of a mass post. Not much different than real life, someone will still blab about what you said - this is a reflection of our need for control, not privacy. In the way of intimacy, there are still things I share with friends that could never be on Facebook. A laugh, a hike, meal, dirt, sweat, hugs and inspiration. Oh these things can be quoted, announced or photoed - but Facebook will never replace the human experience of feeling.

I find Facebook hard to avoid most times and refreshing when I can stay away from it long enough to have a life. An example of this would be my hiking trips - as long as I am on the trail, I will not go near Facebook, but I do,shamelessly, relish in posting pictures of stunning nameless mountains and valleys and dirty feet (my trail name!) over a creek, and then blabbing about it all over my album. I use Facebook to keep in touch with international and East coast friends and family, and I'm thankful to be connected to them in this way. Their friendship is not without it's intimacy because of Facebook - there is still the messy ordeal of seeing these "friends" in person, and having that dinner or beer and having to discuss life in person, and this, thank god, still happens. It will happen with or without Facebook, human beings are biologically built to live off of each other - in person. I think Facebook is a valuable tool, but just that - a tool. It's not your actual life that you are physically living, though many people seem to confuse the two, and th theerein, in my opinion  lies the crux of its issue. Facebook is not real, you are. You can control what you use Facebook for, and how you use it, just like your real life - but it is not your real life. Facebook is simply the Matrix of our times, a 2 dimensional Holodeck. A most elaborate, provocative and engaging - TOY.