Social Netiquette

Alright, so I've had a bit of nostalgia lately and I decided to look up a few old friends on facebook (not MySpace because it's a the epitome of horrible web design by default...at least facebook has limitations on 'personalization').

Going through all of the old people though, I realized that it wasn't going to be a simple task. Somewhat because a lot of people don't appear to be connected to the web. While I personally can't understand that, I can understand that some people don't want to have an active web presence. So that I could forgive, but people make it ridiculously hard to tell who they are for 2 main reasons:

1. The profile image is of something random
2. They got married and decided that their maiden name isn't important anymore
   

Now, I could just list those 2 things and not explain, but what kind of post would that be?

So let's delve into the first since it's the shortest. The site is called FACEbook, not randompicturebook or noimagebook or fungroupphotowhereeverybodysheadis2pixelstallbook. No it's facebook, and the reason it's called that is so that I can see your face and tell who you are and then we can become friends. Why do I want to be your friend? Because I think you're a cool person that I'd like to see again at some point in my future.

Now, the even more aggravating problem, because at least if people don't have a good image you could potentially find them by their information. However, girls that run off and get married and then toss aside their maiden name with reckless abandon aggravate the snot out of me. I understand that you're married, I am too. Marriage is a great thing, and it is the source of so much joy. But to be on something like facebook and completely abandon any mention of your maiden name is the most 100% guaranteed way of making sure that your future will only involve people that you ever see again are people that hung out with you after you got married. While that may be cool to you, I once enjoyed your company and who you are...now I can never find out what became of you. If I'm in your same area I could drive right by your place and not even say hello. Mini disaster in my book...chances squandered and opportunities missed. The worst part is that for you married ladies out there, there is a field called "Former Name", you could just fill that out and viola all is well. Instead you lead a life that abandons a great chunk from your past...when you were just 'you' and you were great then too.

So to all of you social-site-using people out there. Social sites are like a big phone book with all of the cool people from all over the world, the best part of these sites is that you can use them to find all of the people that you want in your own personal phone book so that you can meet and relive who you were. By fixing these 2 simple things we can change ourselves from being simply strangers in this world passing by one another in the ether to once again sharing laughs, reliving memories and developing our friendships further from this moment on.

PS
Chris Johnson...if you're reading this, I tried to find you, but MAN are there a lot of you in the world.