How I met Facebook

As I can remember, the whole social networking through the internet started in middle school. It was all about instant message and “Aim” chatting with your friends for long periods of time, and starting rumors about girls without picking up a phone. All of my friends had an Aim account, even my younger sister was always typing away after school. But I refused to give in to the popular fade. I’d always been asked by many of my friends to make an account so I’ll be able to chat with them, but I never did. I felt it was childish and I was too mature for it, and my friends didn’t get why I was so stubborn about it.
Once High School started people began to forget about Aim because MySpace was blowing up. In a matter of weeks everyone had their own profile and for the first time I can see everyone’s social status right in front of my computer screen. I honestly became addicted to MySpace, checking to see if anybody’s profile changed or what song this person has on their profile. But like Aim I refused to get my own personal account because of the same outlook I had on it(even though I’d use my friend’s account to log in every time I was on a computer.) Then it came to the point where I made my own profile, but hid it from everyone else just so I had access to actually browse the site with ease, but didn’t actually engage in the socializing of MySpace.
The first time I heard about Facebook was the summer going into my junior year of High School. I was a part of the National Hispanic Institute and I was participating in a youth camp where I met many fellow thriving Hispanics. On the last day of camp everyone told me get on Facebook so that we can be friends and stay in contact. Facebook was brand new to me and most people were still on the MySpace tip. So I thought that this could be a site I can use since nobody I know from school had one. So I ended up setting up an account on Facebook. But sure enough I found out that I wasn’t the only one who had discovered Facebook, so I immediately deleted my account. I was back from where I started, using MySpace but not actually using it.
After a while I noticed how MySpace quickly started to become unpopular (except to my sister) and people started to talk about “facebooking” instead. I became sold when my best friend who didn’t believe in network socializing and never made his own account as well, actually had his own profile set up on Facebook. I decided that I would finally get my own legitimate profile on Facebook. It seemed like I finally found a site that was mature enough for me. It took me the day before moving to College to actually make one. Knowing that I’d probably never be able to stay in contact or become any closer with some of my acquaintances, it seemed crazy for me not to make a profile. Since then I’ve been using Facebook religiously especially for my EMAC class, and can’t think of ever going back to MySpace.
Now for the question of who owns who, I believe if you are dependent to a constant surveillance of social networking, then yeah Facebook defiantly owns you. In my situation I believe I own Facebook, I use it for many ways of staying in contact with friends and or acquaintances, but I’m not completely dependent on it because I always use other means of communication. Like I don’t know…I actually call some of my friends, set up lunch meetings to catch up, text once in a while, and emailing forwarded messages to people I haven’t seen in years. I do admit though at one point MySpace did own me even though I didn’t have my own profile, but that time has passed, and like I said I’m on the Facebook tip…for now.