Facebook Phenomena and Overconnected

What a strange thing Facebook is. I can't decide if I like it or not yet, and an unforseen, and really bizarre situation has arisen: members of my adoptive family, family through marriage and birth family, are able to connect and interract. I'm not sure I can cope!

I don't suppose this connectivity should be a problem but in my head I like to keep the two families in separate boxes (birth and adoptive that is). One of the weirdest experiences of my life was when my birth grandmother and two aunties came to visit me from Canada. We were all in my mum's house and I just kept looking from face to face across the table. I have never felt so uncomfortable and yet I'm not sure whose discomfort I was feeling; my own or what I imagined they should feel. I say 'should' because in the end, everyone looked perfectly at ease apart from me!

Facebook is quite different from Myspace in many ways. There's a wall function that allows you to comment on people's pages (like Myspace) but you can also comment back on your own wall, or have 'wall-to-wall' conversations, which is rather neat. A bit like a public msn messenger... hmmm.

Weird. All these forums for keeping in touch with people you already know. Are we past picking up the phone? A friend of mine recently said we must catch up soon, only she posted it on Myspace rather than sending me a text, or calling me up. Perhaps this is the future. Is it less personal, or just giving us access to loads more ways of connecting with people? And what about when we have on-line conversations with people, through blogs or Myspace, or Facebook, that we then never talk about when we meet up face to face?! Now that really is weird!

On the funnier side of things, Facebook asks you how you know people and then emails them for confirmation, and so is currently emailing my husband with a request that he confirm I am indeed his wife - he may well refuse but knows if he does I won't cook dinner or wash his socks for a month! I only have 11 friends! I need him!