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I think lunxpress points out something that we have discussed here in the past, the division between online life and real life*. Facebook, more than any other site previously, brought my real life online. Places like TFP, when I first started hanging out here in 2003, were places to be anonymous.
Life online was one that we kept sheltered, largely, from our activities in real life. We hide behind avatars and nicknames. We also tended to engage with others in ways that in real life, we never would (anything from hot political discussion and flaming to flirtatious behaviour and out and out cybersex). With the advent of Facebook (and, yes, there are other sites that fall into this category but Facebook is the one that brought us over the tipping point) our real life came online.
For me, this was initially an issue. I didn't want my real life friends and family to have any clue about TFP and vice versa. I would not befriend TFP friends on Facebook. The mashing of the two, and more importantly, the possibility of some real life people discovering things that I may have posted on TFP was not cool.
As Facebook became a bigger part of my online experience, I ceased to care about this distinction. I still don't encourage, or really want, real life friends to discover TFP but I am not so fussed if they do.
Let's face it, the wild west days of the anonymous Internet are gone. Privacy, is not the same (if it ever was) as it was. Technology is changing us in many ways but especially in our social interactions. You can fight it but you can't escape it and you certainly can't go back to the way it was. It is more important now to learn how to filter and direct the flow of your information than try to stop it.
* I do see online life as real life but am making this distinction of real vs. online for ease of discussion
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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke
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