Just needed to get that off my chest.

OK. Here it comes. I can feel it. I need to freak out for a second.

Facebook and Twitter are fucking nuts. This stuff is getting to be a little too much. I'm not sure if I can handle this much longer. I have a hunch there's going to be some kind of backlash. Like, when people finally bug out to the exponent about what information is available online and social websites permanently and irrevocably come to life and fuck us all up. Then we'll live in another dark age. No internet, it's going to blow up.

I've been on Facebook since the summer between sophomore and junior year at Hamilton, 2003 I guess. A cute lil' U of Virginia girl I worked with at Explo told me about it and forced me to join. It was the first I'd heard of it - only certain schools were listed. It seemed to be a very college-oriented thing at the time and I was only in a Hamilton College network and couldn't do much outside of said network.

Now, don't I understand, just about anyone who searches for someone's name, Googles it, they get a Facebook profile high up on the results? And unless you protect yourself with your privacy settings, strangers, employers, co-workers, your mom, can see all your exploits and finer moments of existence. Grandma can look at you doing a keg stand. Bossman can check you barfing into a bowl next to your bed.

This only grazes the surface of a powerful internet force washing over all of us. So you join, cool, you start collecting friends by requests and requesting and suddenly, BAM!, you have 100 friends from high school and college. Some of these friends are your best friends on earth, and some of these friends absolutely work it out on Facebook. They're flooding you with Cause Invitations, Lil' Green Patches, and Group Membership Requests. But the worst grievance this friend abuses is the Status Update.

It feels almost like an insult to my intelligence that when I look at my home I'm asked "What are you doing right now?" with a little speech bubble coming out of my picture. Why do you want to know computer? You don't have a heart.

But I think this is the ultimate question for a certain generation raised on internet saturation. We have online identities that sometimes seem different from how I would describe or perceive some of my best friends. We present ourselves, or at least a set of words and images, on a designated space of the web, to the world. We want to seem smart and cool, right? Or is that just me? Anyway, some people clearly have no problem with filling up as much digital fart space as possible with painfully unnecessary updates on their life.

Oh, you're taking a nap, are you? Mmm, cool. You had a really tough day at the office? Sorry to hear that. Me too. You have to take a gigantic dump but you're really constipated? MAN! Aww gross, dude. I don't need to know about that business. Please. Who does? Why must we update each other multiple times a day with musings and chit chat about our lives? Because we're egomaniacs with multiple identities: a real life one, that we concoct through only visual and aural cues, and then however many identities you've cultivated in your spare time on the internet.

Gays have taken to it quite well, obviously. We use it as if we were in a tiny town in the middle of Iowa dying to meet another homosexual for the first time. Suddenly you have a veritable online shop of them. Peruse, poke, wink, wave, unlock private photos, message, mail or chat with all the pretty young things you can stand looking at.

But then you add them on Facebook and all your friends see that you're adding a bunch of gay-looking dudes in Philadelphia lately with the little press release that is issued to every single friend with every move you make. Which you're not so sure about but to make matters worse, to really dig the knife in deeper, even the cute ones you added, now you have to hear about how their pasta they had at the Restaurant was overcooked and disappointing. Waaanh. Or that they're feeling bloaty and going to the gym to do something about!. Please, sweetjesus.com, do something about this. Make it stop.

Wait, let me check that notification real quick.