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A WORLD IN ITSELF Facebook is a social networking website that’s gained cult status

If it doesn’t surprise you that we aren’t even in the same time zone, that we haven’t sat across each other and moved wooden letters around, that my ‘shelf’ is an application that can be dismantled with a mouse click or that he doesn’t drink, not even socially, you’re probably an old hand at Facebook.

Thanks to this larger than life social networking website that’s gained cult status in recent years, the lines between the real and the make-believe have blurred and, in some cases, vanished altogether. At first sight, Facebook is a world in itself, intimidating first-time users into logging out in a hurry, overwhelmed by the possibilities it offers. The second session isn’t much easier, for that’s when you realise that it’s all you can do in real life plus a few extras.

Gleeful adults spend guilt-free hours indulging in juvenile preoccupations such as throwing a snowball at someone (never mind that it’s April), shaking magic eight balls, squirting glitter, instigating food fights, answering multiple choice questions to find out which “Seinfeld” character they are most like or adding aliens to friends’ solar systems.

It’s a place where irreverence is a given.

Users proudly display their membership in communities with titles such as “I’ve been mistaken for a drunken person when I was completely sober” or “Whatever your PC can do, my MAC can do better”.

A haven for the socially awkward, Facebook lets users hit on, serenade, dance with or propose to people without the complications of face-to-face interaction (although you must already be a friend of this person to have access to these ‘actions’).

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