Nothing has made me quite as self-conscious about tweeting as the knowledge that those tweets will be recorded for all of time within the Library of Congress. But I do actually believe in the logic behind the decision.
I’ve often griped about Facebook. But the truth is once you deny access to 90% of the Facebook applications and hide anything ending with ‘Ville’ from your news feed, it gets back to being friends sharing thoughts and images with each other. And that is something I can appreciate.
I understand the desire to differentiate between those relationships in daily life and those that exist online. I understand that there are different dimensions and dynamics to both. What I struggle with though is the implication that friendships formed online are in some way inferior, trivial or ‘unreal.’