What happened to confiding in one another?

Picture courtesy of a fellow blogspotter, microbrewreviews.blogspot.com

I was on Facebook last Monday, November 28, 2011, when I started to see wall posts regarding a friend of mine from Brazil. At first, the wall posts were broad, but then they became specific, like the one below:

“Half of me is sleeping with you at this hospital!

I'm here by your side, to see you wake up from this terrible nightmare!

Always, always hoping and praying for you Higor Borges Paolinelli!

I love my chug!”

The post above was from his girlfriend, and stated what I found to be obvious: my friend was in a coma.

I have a close knit group of friends from my home country, Brazil, so in our group, everyone knows everyone. This post led to similar status updates from every single one of my friends currently living in Brazil.

Initially, I thought: Why hasn’t anyone called to specifically tell me about the accident? Then, why do I have to find out such worrisome and tragic news from Facebook? Has Facebook become the bearer of bad news?

This is just one incident of many for me, and I am not the only in our small Marymount Manhattan community to experience it as well. Nicole Stefansberg, a senior at MMC, said she found out that one of her closest friends fight with skin cancer through the Facebook Newsfeed.

“The first thing I did was leave a comment that this was not something to use as humor, obviously, right?” said Stefansberg, “Because there was no way she could have something as serious as skin cancer, and tell her loved ones through Facebook.”

Or so she thought. Stefansberg did find out that this was not a joke. She also found that her friend thought breaking the news to everyone over Facebook was an easier way to cope with the news.

Beside my friend’s car accident that left him in a coma, I have found out more personal news from Facebook then I care to receive.

For example, in another situation, I found out about a very close friend’s drug addiction, a car accident due to drunk driving, and her temporary state of paraplegia through Facebook. The fact that Facebook has become an outlet for personal issues is transparent, but I wonder why it has become so.

Champion to all others is the fact that Facebook can reach any number of personal contacts in a person’s phone book, instantly. Instead of spending hours calling or texting, one can instantly send the news out with one simple status update.

            Murser said that Facebook “made it quicker and easier to let everyone know” about events, and big or bad news.

Following the first reason, is the vital point of being able relay information in thought-like form, meaning the one posting the piece of information like a death, accident, or etc. can do so without outright saying it.

I believe that posting personal information, which might containing tragic pieces of information, without having to out-right state it, makes posting such information on Facebook extremely attractive, and easy to do.

The sad and disturbing part of this sender-receiver communication model that has integrated into Facebook, is that if it was not for Facebook, I would not have found out about a lot of important personal events in the past couple of years as soon as I did.

            Sometimes, I am the sender of such Facebook posts, not just the receiver.  Before any of my friends knew the exact day and certainty of my move to New York City, I published some not so straight forward posts to Facebook.

“Getting closer to my dreams,” read my Facebook status on August 23, 2010. This was ten days before I actually moved to the city.

Facebook has surpassed its original meaning of existence, and has crawled into our innermost intimate aspects of life. But what if this allows us to actually communicate more, only is interactively through the Web, and then is it still so harshly scrutinized?