Facebook

She changed her Facebook profile's 'Relationship Status'. It now shows up in my "News [read: Stalker] Feed" as an image of a broken heart and a message about how she "went from being 'in a relationship' to 'single.'"

I guess that lends some finality to it. You can make a rash phone call, or have a careless fight, but it takes more effort to change your Facebook status; those update links are hard to find, and small, requiring a steady hand and focused mind to make the changes. More so, I know she doesn't update her profile that frequently. So she had to go there, and update the status.

It's also final because it lets the all of her friends know what the deal is. Maybe some friend of hers, or someone who has a crush on her, but who hasn't talked to her in some time will see it. Maybe they'll decide to take action and console her, or approach her. Regardless, the world (a hyperbole, being the subset of the population that uses Facebook, and the subset of the population that knows her) now knows.

How do I feel about that? I don't know. My Facebook status hasn't changed. I had insisted that we both be listed a 'In a Relationship', but didn't link it to each other, for fear of letting our professional and private lives collide too much (it didn't work, everyone who wanted to know, knew). So my status hasn't changed (as it would automatically had we been cross linked). I have yet to change it, so to the world (again, hyperbole), my life hasn't changed, therefore, I don't know.

What does it mean? Why did my spine twinge and heart sink when I saw the update? I guess I'd call it modern.

100 Years ago, to communicate over distance, you wrote letters, which took days to create and days to deliver. You had time to distill your thoughts and think about what you wanted to say. You packed a whole argument about your whys and hows into a letter, because you knew you weren't going to get interrupted, and so you had this chance to say all that you meant to say. How did your friends find out? You told them, and they told others, via letter. That is if they knew about you at all.

50 Years ago, you did it over the phone, but it wasn't a cell, it was the one line in your house, or wherever there was access. Again, you had to be sure about what you were gonna say because you might not have a chance to repeat it or modify it. Those words you said then and there where the final argument. Your friends found out via the same way, over the phone, in stages.

Now, you send a message via Facebook. It's short, and probably impersonal. All it is is a tiny picture of a broken heart. But now the hyperbole knows. Would you say that the brevity of the message carries less meaning? Less content? I'd argue that it carries that much more. In a world where attention spans and communications are shorter and more attuned, that's all we get. But really, isn't that all we need?