I would have loved to go back through my old Myspace for this mission, but was forced to use Facebook instead as a result of a major shift in my attitude towards social media in the last few years. I actually still remember pretty vividly when I first joined Facebook and set up my profile in 2009 with the help of a slightly hipper friend. For some reason, I’ve always considered myself a private person when it comes to social media presence, but looking back on my Facebook history from 2009 and 2010 , I was shocked to see the frequency of my posts and their content. It turns out that I didn’t have near the amount of discretion that I seem to remember myself having. I posted a lot of statuses simply updating people on what I was doing at the moment, or about a more special event like getting concert tickets. I think this type of sharing was encouraged by Facebook at that time, because the status bar would say, “Your Name is…” and was waiting for you to fill in the blank. Since this time in the evolution of Facebook, I feel like the site has gotten much less focused on individual interaction and conversations like the status updates at that time seemed to promote, and more about curating a specific picture of yourself for others. Facebook seems to be much more image based these days, and the Share button allows people to constantly share articles that carefully define their political or religious beliefs for others. I’m not sure if my personal digital journey is at all tied to this phenomenon, but I definitely post with a lot less frequency today, and have gone back and deleted all personal information on sites that I don’t monitor regularly, like Myspace. I like guarding my privacy a little bit closer online than I used to, but this episode of digital time travel did make me miss the days when I was still engaged in and excited about the connecting powers of a social network, and not focused on the cynical, superficial aspects that they sometimes breed.
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