25 September 2007 is the day I joined Facebook, according to my timeline.
My research, uhmmm snooping ventures, indicate that not many of my friends have converted to timeline. Despite the fact that we were given a deadline earlier this year to move or be moved. Some people! They will never know the joys of knowing when their very important milestone events took place and putting up a timeline cover. Unless they wake up one morning to find one, courtesy of Facebook.
I moved to timeline willingly and took that brave step into the unknown, #justsaying 
September 2007 was a simple time on Facebook. All you did was accept friendships – as many as would have you – and then send them all imaginary drinks or throw imaginary sheep. An occasional (daily) check of ex-boyfriends’ statuses notwithstanding.
Remember the shock you received when you secretly viewed someone else’s profile and found a graphic that said “See who viewed your profile” with a list of names? Or when you coincidently clicked ‘Like’ while snooping?
Those were almost innocent times.
Now however things have become a whole lot more complicated.
Firstly, there are categories for your Facebook friends. You can select and categorise your friends and then choose what they can view on your timeline.
Now I ask you…what if you have a colleague who is also a friend and what if you want them to see some status updates as a colleague, but not others as a friend? **OUCH My Head Hurts**
And what if one of your family members is on your restricted list, but they turn up at a family funeral and everyone else asks you about your latest status update? #awkward
What is a girl to do?? No one prepares you for these kinds of decisions.
A true story…last week I received two friendship requests that had me feeling very stressed out about whether to accept or not. I went back and forth and almost clicked “Accept” a few times.
One is a family friend who is also Facebook friends with all my family. Someone I never thought I would ever actually see again. That is until this past Saturday…
When I told my sister that I would not accept his friend requests, she looked at me as if I had caused a great insult on behalf of the family.
The second one is an old school mate who is married to my cousin. I have not seen her or my cousin, for that matter, since high school. But you know a family funeral or wedding or reunion will come up…
I declined the first and still have to make a decision on the latter.
Then there’s that damn ticker which works out fine if you’re nosy (hey I’m a blogger, it’s research!) and want to be able to see every single thing your friends are doing on Facebook (see previous brackets). It is sort of like being an unwilling voyageur. You don’t want to look, but you can’t look away either.
But the reverse is true as well, I guess – all my comings and goings are there – for all my blogger Facebook friends who access Facebook from a computer – to see 
Oh how I long for those simpler days of sheep tossing, multiple requests to play Farmville and hours of stalking.
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