This time I'll be sweeter

Michelle: Social media networking sites have changed the landscape of love.

Gone are the days of letter writing and the anticipation of receiving perfumed envelopes enclosed with pictures of one’s beloved.

Anything can be uploaded on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a host of other sites to declare one’s love and affection. Poetry and prose are no longer original creations but copy-pasted and “sotto-mized”! Want to sing her a song? No need for harana, just upload a video and you can have Angela Bofill serenading her “This time I’ll be sweeter… our love will run deeper… and I won’t mess around, I won’t let you down. Have faith in me, have faith…. in me.” If you don’t know the song, chances are you’re below 20 and you had to ask your mom, “Who the heck is Angela Bofill?”

DJ: Some people still perceive online dating as disturbing while going out to a club and grinding with strangers is perfectly okay.

What naysayers should realize is social media is here to stay. Old friends find each other after years of disconnect and new friends add each other up. Facebook and Twitter are creating this whole new world of dating. They also have created a new breed of stalkers.

Gone are the days when scary stalkers sat outside your house watching your every move. These days, they’re sipping Frap at Starbucks while being glued to pricey tablets as they follow your every tweet and post. Stalking is no longer just for creeps!

M: Technology, particularly the Internet, has spawned so many creative ways of spending or wasting our time. Instead of personal conversations facing one another, there’s Facebook and Facetime. Before you know it, your partner has gone about face and left you for another pretty face. I know of some people who limit their usage of Facebook so they have time to do other things. There’s even a tool (the name escapes me now) that controls the time one spends on Facebook.

I can Google it but I have no Internet connection, which is for some people a mortal sin. Twitter has twitted and retwitted secrets, scandals, and sob stories that can rival any telenovela. And followers who follow these tweets may soon find themselves tethered and spending huge amounts of time just tweeting. If we are not careful and wise in using social media, we can be slaves to it. There are people who feel bad or rejected if nobody likes their posts. Insta-like is the order of the day. And posting every nitty gritty of one’s life is dear diary overload.

DJ: Status update is core to social relationships. How else would you know what your crush had for lunch? But avoid these obnoxious updates: chronic complaints about everything particularly if you’re over-sharing them while habitually committing crime against grammar, bragging about what you did one night at band camp and meaningless calls to action unless if voting for a candidate in your neighborhood beauty pageant is a matter of life and death. And take this to heart: don’t tag unto others what you don’t want others tag unto you. It’s awesome to share photos.

But not everyone really wants a picture of themselves sleeping with their mouths open splashed across the worldwide web. Post only pictures you want posted of you. Perhaps those long-lost yearbook pictures of your friend before she got her nose job done is probably better off staying lost.

The golden rule still applies.

M: I’d be “amalayer” if I say that I don’t enjoy Facebook. It’s a great way to keep in touch, especially with friends, families and relatives abroad. Social media has impacted our levels of communication. Instead of just merely communicating cliché, facts, ideas and judgment and feelings, many are now going directly to communicating transparency—showing of who they are. It used to be that the higher the trust, the deeper level of communication.

With social media, even those who are not your friends can know who you are by what you reveal in your posts. As we are taught to be careful with what we say lest we hurt or offend others, let’s also be judicious about what we post, including pictures with significant others. As one friend who recently broke up with her boyfriend learned, it’s difficult to forget and move on when pictures of the two of them together still surface on social networking sites. Well, nobody said it was easy to erase memories. So, just sing Angela Bofill’s song This Time I’ll Be Sweeter.

DJ: Who is Angela Bofill? If our readers are as clueless as I am, uhum, good thing there’s Google! Almost everything is Google-able these days. This is awesome or frightening depending on how one is using social media.

Think hard before posting anything. And think smart before responding to anything negative. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your boss or great grandmother to see. Whether social media is a friend or foe is ultimately all up to you.

(ssinglestalk@yahoo.com)