The issue is not that privacy is disappearing, its that we are willingly giving it up in exchange for other’s lack of privacy. Nowadays, its almost common to meet somebody new, and then find out all sorts of interesting things about them in your free time. This practice scares me.

But I’m not worried. I have a Facebook, but it isn’t mine. Somebody from high school wanted to look me up, they had to do it the old fashioned way – asking people that we both knew, if they knew where to get ahold of me. Just how I like it.

Odd thing is, when I was just getting started on this whole ‘internet’ thing, I wasn’t very keen on posting tons of personal information online. Early school assignments were to create your own webpage (this was back in the Geocities days); I always made mine fiction, wondering why my classmates wanted the entire world to know they liked pizza and dolphins.

Myspace came about, and all I ever saw was annoying ads, unwanted annoying music, and the most horrible eye-raping ‘layouts’ conceivable.

Facebook was much more sane, but then at the same time, I realized that anybody on my ‘friends’ list would be able to see everything I’d ever written, to anybody. What possible use could I have for this? I could never have all my people on the same list, because most of my people don’t get along with each other. Some groups are into illegal things, some groups are into immoral things, and I have to somehow fit my mother into this mess of tangled Web2.0? No thanks.

All in all, I’ve watched Internet become a bad place to be. Farmville, designed to never end and never get better, but always always always keep you on that page with that ad for just a few minutes more, and while you’re at it, why not get your friends to play too? A new animal is the reward for what amounts to unwanted harassment of people you call friends, but if you want people to see your new animal, you need to pay us with your credit card!

I mean…why? Why? Is it really so profitable for ad companies to zombify the entire populace of a website?