Backstabbed by Your Online Bestfriend

When I was about 8 years old, Slum books were the all the rage. People of my generation will know what I'm talking about. They were books filled full with topics that ranged from nice things like "most likely to succeed" and "prettiest" and "most friendly" to categories that were downright nasty: "sluttiest" (at 8! can you believe how catty girls can be), "most likely to be an old maid", "worst BO" and the like. you get the picture. Yet, because having your slum book signed by the everyone in your batch made you a half-way decent person in the eyes of hapless adolescent girls, I made sure I got one. I made sure to use only nice categories to encourage good will among everyone. I threw mine out though when eagerly reading through the pages upon its return, some nasty people had decided to add nasty categories of their own (see above-mentioned examples) and made sure to add my name under most of them. This is perhaps the main reason why slum died the way they did. Everyone was not at all ecstatic to be told what other people believed was wrong with them.

As adults, we know better than to readily believe strangers' perceptions and opinions about us, because we are (hopefully) more secure about the way we view ourselves. But what if someone were to take our insecurities, and use it to prey on our weak spots, marketing to us society's vision of what we should be? Our new BFF, the internet, may hold the key to our (in my case once again) undoing.

Take for instance Facebook, which generates income from advertisers who are, agressive, to say the least. Offensive, more likely. The social networking program, indeed with its requisite benefits, takes our information and uses it to market to us certain products, websites, and services when we least expect it. With email we know better to be guarded with what we open and what we accept. But we do not notice how readily we part with our information when we are on social website such as Facebook. We tell the developers about our birthdays, our musical and literary tastes, the movies that we like, the things we find hot. Heck, we even tell it right off the bat things that you would not tell merely acquaintances: sexual orientation, sexual preference, social proficiencies and - oh yeah, relationship status.

New members who don't know any better complacently accept and approve application invitations, thus creating more detailed profiles that more advertisers can target and bombard with their ads. But even when you are conservative in the information that you provide, like me, you are still susceptible to these annoying and offensive digs at your personality. Merely the fact that I am Filipina generates ads for foreigner-run websites looking for the Filipina wives. Merely putting "engaged" in your profile generates advertising gems such as "Don't be a Fat Bride" and "How to Fit into Your Wedding Dress". Putting in "Single" will turn up slogans such as "Lesbian? How to Deal" and even ads for cosmetic procedures ranging from electrolysis to liposuction.

Very much like dealing with bullies we have encountered when we were younger, I suppose the best defense is to toughen up and not mind these subtle digs. Maturity is, after all, measured by how we take criticism and make it work for us. But as a precaution, let us be more mindful of the kind of information we reveal about us online, and to whom we do this. These ads are harmless, for sure. But as with everything brought on by the internet, it has a potential to get way, way out of hand.