Internet PDA, TechnaTMI?

Public displays of affection are typical on a college campus, and at parties among peers. However, if your boss, grandma, or professor was watching would we still be so openly affectionate? Typically the rules of PDA are generally defined; there are acceptable places to make out, and unacceptable ones. But now due to social networking cites the lines have been blurred.

Posting pictures of make out sessions and grinding on your significant other at a club is internet PDA. This is extremely common today, but is it ok? Is it okay to bombard the World Wide Web with images of your tongue down your girlfriend’s throat? This issue is heavily debated.

One school of thought says yes. If you are uploading your personal images to your personal page then you can do whatever you want. There is an option of deleting a friend if you don’t want to see what they are posting. The idea of this theory is “if you don’t like it, don’t look.” The converse opinion of this theory is that it is not possible to not look. Due to “news feeds” which record recent activity on the site, people are unwillingly exposed to these images.

The question comes down to whether or not a social network profile is private or public. Does your Myspace page fall in the same jurisdiction as a restaurant, or is it more akin to your best friend’s basement? What is the code of conduct for public displays of affection on an exclusively private Facebook page? How can we determine what type of behavior is unacceptable on your own page? It is like you’re in your room, with a peephole for 500 of your friends. It’s your room, but can you ever really act that way?

cheater cheater, profile page reader

While infidelity has been around simply forever, the advent of social networking sites have completely exacerbated the practice. The quick and easy access to an unlimited pool of potential conquests has not only fostered the ability to cheat, but in my opinion, encouraged it. However, cheaters be warned, all of your sneaky cyber sexing will eventual come to light! The truth is, while sites like Myspace, Facebook, and Friendster have made it easier to cheat, they have also made it easier to get caught.

These sites allow conversation between friends in the form of inbox messages, and Facebook chats. These features allow virtual strangers to get to know- and possibly get it on - with each other. However, these incriminating chats are saved. My friend John Doe fell victim to his own treachery when he accidentally stored his password on his girlfriend's computer, inadvertently giving her a free pass to all his salacious conversations. His plans for potential hook ups with random women would have never been discovered had it not been for his social networking page. While we may think our pages are a sealed fortress behind which we can act unabashedly, the truth is nothing in the cyber world is safe. The ability to hack into a partner’s page is increasingly simple. There are even internet services springing up which, for a fee, will give a suspicious mate access to their spouse's info. Another friend of mine discovered her boyfriend was cheating by learning his new Myspace had a password of ILUVJANE. Safe to say my friend REBECCA was not pleased. Many a relationship has crumbled due to negative Facebook findings.

Thus, yet another problem with technology and relationships I am presenting, is the overexposure to each other's actions. The wall we build to keep things private has gotten an enormous peep hall drilled into it, thanks to the internet.

As with everything else, thanks to the internet it has become incredibly convenient to become a cheater, or discover you’re a cheated on. Call me old fashion but I believe if you are going to betray your partner you should have to do it the difficult, inconvenient, more trouble than it's actually worth way like countless priests, professors, and presidents before you.

http://www.facebookcheating.com/