Hey- so I'm not sure this thread is the most germane one for the question I have, but I think I'll post here anyways just because it is at least marginally tangential with the topic of the internet/computers.
So a bit of background info: I'm a 22 year old student about to enter my final year of uni. I've never been formally diagnosed with Asperger's or any other mental pathology for that matter, but I have found that members of my family behave in manners consistent with the DSM criteria for Aspieness (one of my siblings, for instance, frequently threw tantrums during her time growing up, and even now has some issues with reading people and assessing situations). Despite not having a diagnosis, I believe that I might have at least a borderline case of Asperger's. What makes me hold this belief is the fact that I didn't really know how emotions such as love or anger or disgust worked until my first year at uni (this is not to say that I did not feel those emotions before then, only that I did not comprehend them). I also had a weird relationship with my friends during high school in which I often felt left out of social outings (no one would text me to say that people were going out, etc), although when I did go out with my mates I wouldn't really engage with them (nothing they were talking about was really interesting to me). Ergo, awkwardness.
Anyways, now to the crux of this post:
I was wondering if anyone here uses Facebook less for social activities / interaction (i.e., writing on other people's walls, wishing people a happy birthday) and more as a tool to just look at other people's interactions and try to understand them. I know it used to be sort of looked down upon to be a "Facebook stalker", but this phenomenon of dwelling on other people's profiles has grown to the point where it really doesn't seem too marked a behavior to observe without speaking. What do y'all think?
13 Jul 2011, 8:48 pm
