Today there are many ways in which our loved ones can embarrass us. It’s not just publicly with the example of my mother, when she goes out and starts making my friends spin on the dance floor, but in the cyber realm too. I overheard a friend talking the other day and who stated ‘You know Facebook is no longer cool when your grandpa has a profile’. Now I don’t know about most people, but my grandmother can just about use a mobile and even then, she cannot have it on a locked setting due to the fear of being unable to call me ten times a day.
Social networking is a fantastic way to keep in touch with relatives across the globe, however it also means that those individuals also have an online profile which may not be something you want to associated with. A fine example is one of my relatives who has a slightly narcissistic tendency- I’m afraid to say, and has pictures on a personal website wearing, not much, perhaps ‘wearing’ is too strong a word. Now I was deeply embarrassed when I was showing my boyfriend who my family members were across the oceans, when we saw these pictures. Oh gosh, too late then, association made, even with my boyfriends short term memory I don’t believe he will ever let me forget!
There is now I find a hierarchy/snobbishness/ladder of cool, of which social websites people are expected to use. I found that I have acquired an inbuilt social network preference when I received an email, informing me that my estranged Father wants me as a friend on a network I used about five years ago. Now he’s not an old man, and he certainly lives in a place where there is a high media out put- so why oh why would he wish to use a unfashionable site. There’s no accounting for taste, and I will use all of the power on my privacy settings to minimise being embarrassed even further by my family…if that is at all possible!
Creative*
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