Face Value

I'm a bit amazed by how open people are with Facebook and MySpace. I think of people from my past that I'd really like to see but there are also a couple of people that would make me duck and cover if they materialized out of the woodwork. I don't know if guys have these experiences, but I can think back to some slightly creepy encounters with guys who stood a bit too close to me while talking or guys who seemed to know a little bit too much about my personal life. I quickly took down some personal info from classmates.com when I saw that one particular scary character from high school had looked at it. Let's just say, you should never tell a 16 year old girl that you know which bedroom window is hers. When I google my name, I am sometimes appalled by the info that shows up that connects the dots of my life story. This is the actually the second version of my blog. I deleted my first when I had a moment of panic with a particularly paranoid employer. Wish I hadn't done it though, because there was some pretty funny stuff there. Oh well. Maybe I'm just secretly jealous that people have such exciting lives that they share with all the other people with exciting lives. I do know that when I ask my students if they've checked my teacher page for make-up asignments, they look at me if I'm talking about space alien cloning. On the other hand, they update their mood indicator on Myspace every other hour. A quick glance online will tell me whether or not my sixth period is coming in sleepy, bored or just peachy. I am not sure if this posting of our lives online is actually making communication better as a society. I have found myself saying things online that I probably would have a hard time saying in person w/o feeling like an idiot. Is this a good thing or bad thing? Am I able to express myself better within the safety of my keyboard or am I really just creating an image? When do you take what you see of that person online for face value when they can pick and choose what people can see?