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We all love to hate it – the status and feed updates from Facebook are what get us through that boring workday. I thank Facebook for making me even nosier than I was before. “Those two are in a relationship now?”, “OMG! They broke up!”, “Wow, he got pretty wasted this weekend.” Facebook tells me everything I could ever want to know about people I barely talk to.
The constant flow of information from the feed on the Facebook main page is enough to overwhelm the busiest of minds. But is it necessary to update your relationship status on Facebook? Your friends should already know that you are currently dating someone, and I’m more than certain the people you just collecting as friends could really care less.
Maybe that’s it; it’s to show off to everyone your new boyfriend/girlfriend and that you – yes you – have the ability to be in a relationship. But when do you switch over your “Single” status to officially be “In a Relationship?” Do you discuss this with your new love first, or should it be done right away, or even after a few days? (A little personal side note: when my last boyfriend and I were an “official” couple, I waited a few days, as not to seem overly excited to be dating him.)
But wait, what if you and your sweetheart get into a big fight? Hey! You have an option for that too. Just throw your status to “It’s Complicated”, I’m sure nobody will wonder or question what’s going on in your relationship, I swear. If you use the “It’s Complicated” status, you are just asking for trouble. A friend of mine left that as her status for months, even though she and her boyfriend were perfectly fine and completely over their previous fight. I know if I were dating someone who left their status as that, I would feel a little insulted and question their motives, but that’s just me.
Now, what if you and your partner break up, what happens now? All of your friends, including your significant other’s, will now see that you two have split. That’s pretty embarrassing if you ask me. Something like a break-up is a private matter, people need time to heal and cope with the new changes, and the last thing I would want would be my friends leaving me messages on my wall asking if I was OK.
So is there a Facebook relationship status etiquette? I have always wondered what the grace time would be to changing back your status from “It’s Complicated” or “In a Relationship” back to “Single” and vice-versa. I’m not completely innocent, I have changed my status a few times during the course of a relationship, but the constant feed of information has made me see the light. Now with the introduction of the non-collapsible mini-feed, I can see all the information I have missed throughout the day as I snoop through people’s profiles and get a lot of juicy details about their lives that I really have no use for.
It has become more of a nuisance than anything else, the constant flow of information overwhelming my main page. That’s why I opted to completely remove my relationship status from my page. It’s no business of anyone’s really to know whom I’m dating or whether or not I’m single or in a relationship. The relationship status is just that, a novelty status and a “Look at me! Look at me!” cry for attention. Serial status changers should really get with the program, because nobody wants to have their main page updates flooded with the manic back and forth of single/taken. But then again, that’s just my opinion.
© 2008 – 2010, Daniel Dessinger. All rights reserved.
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