Bria Coleman
Argumentative
Monday, September 24, 2012
Mr. Peter Green
ENG 102

Intimate and Personal Information on Facebook

What about Facebook, you might ask? Facebook “was invented by Harvard computer science student Mark Zuckerberg, along with classmates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.”(“About.com”) Mark Zuckerberg’s first goal for Facebook was just a little sense of humor that led him to create the site as a type of "hot or not" game for Harvard students, where website networkers could compare two student photos side-by-side and let viewers decide who was "hot" and who was "not". In the beginning, Facebook was called Facemash then TheFacebook than finally called Facebook. Facemash opened on October 28, 2003,and closed a few days later; it was shut down by Harvard executives. The Harvard executives pressed charges on Mark Zuckerberg for violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy which included stealing the students photos for the use to populating the website. Mark Zuckerberg also was expelled from Harvard University for his faults, but later all charges were dropped by the court. At first TheFacebook was just for Harvard students but then Zuckerberg enlisted a few of his fellow students to help him grow the website: “Eduardo Saverin worked on business, Dustin Moskovitz as a programmer, Andrew McCollum as a graphic artist, and Chris Hughes they eventually expanded the site to additional universities and colleges. Sean Parker (founder of Napster) became the company's president in 2004”. (“Wikipedia”) The company then changed their name from TheFacebook to just Facebook by purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000. Mark Zuckerberg’s frolics finally paid off for him when profits from Facebook made him the world’s youngest multi-billionaire. (“Facebook”)

But from then to now, Facebook website has turned into something more than what was suspected. Facebook website is every teen, adult, or even young child gets on to discuss their whole life’s story or tell all their intimate information. We should ask ourselves why society’s attitudes toward privacy in the era of talk shows and reality TV has changed? We are so open about everything. Especially things young children shouldn’t be introduced to in the world on public television or Internet. Some would say they get on Facebook for their own psychological release of whatever is on their mind and others are just a part of the group behavior called “herding,” something very common in America’s society. But just like the saying, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” the same thing should happen in your own home or anywhere else, not on the worldwide web where everyone and their grandmother can read and see.

Personally thinking of most people “herding” is their main problem because in America we do it with everything: clothes, shoes, electronics, games, hairstyles, nails, jewelry, cars, and everything celebrities might have or anything society think is popular. Of course if that is all social media is showing us everyday all day, we are going to go do it as well. Herding used to be of bringing individual animals together into a group maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place. Well with humans its really called band wagoning. For example, all this sexual exposure wasn’t as big until a former rapper named Plies came out rapping about all kinds of freaky and sexual things which made teens go try these sexual things and do these things. Along with rappers and singers and how they dress, if a young teen or anyone now wants to fit in with everyone else, of course they are going to go out in dress in look the same way. On Facebook it is very common for someone that has a conflict with a special someone to post a status telling the world how hurt they’re or how they fell. Herding has become a big problem on Facebook; it’s like now people have a primal need to share details about their lives.