5 Squared

Perhaps as viral as anything that has hit Facebook, other than, of course, Facebook itself is the recently phenomenon, 25 Random Things About Me.

The idea is simple enough. Write down 25 facts about yourself. I suppose there's more to it than that. You're supposed to "tag" other people, presumably so they can also fill out their own list.

To put this into a little context, I want to rewind back to more than ten years ago when webcams were cheap enough and high-speed Internet which wasn't so high speed then was affordable enough that people, in particular, teens began their first foray into removing anonymity from their lives. There was something compelling to a few people where they would take photos of themselves of their rooms once a minute or more often.

Of course, the bandwidth was not what it is today where live streaming video and audio are now possible.

In those days, you would get one view of someone's life and yet that view was rather restricted. For, you see, a person isn't merely the physical shell you see outside. Even were you to interact with them, as people do at work, you wouldn't see them as they see themselves. Although self-perception can be flawed, it opens up what's important to someone.

Roughly the same time webcams were becoming popular, the earliest forms of blogging, mainly LiveJournal, but even homespun versions, opened a window, much like reading a secret diary, into the lives of individuals.

25 random facts is as much a reflection of the current desire by the youth and the not-so-young to tell the world, albeit in a small self-censored way, a little about yourself. That world is limited to your so-called Facebook friends, many of which are mere acquaintances if even that. Even so, they're usually not total strangers save for a few stragglers where you pressed "yes" when they asked if they could, pretty please, be your friend.

I don't know if 25 random facts is particularly compelling to me. I don't know I could dig up 25 interesting things to say about myself. Some of those things are less facts than things desired for. I want to be a better husband, better friend, better person. That kind of thing.

It's very much "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" but obviously a bit less titillating. The hope is to learn a little something about someone that you've only interacted in a certain way, or perhaps to learn something about them even though you thought you knew them quite well. Some people, I'm sure, would not enjoy this exercise at all.

The first are those that value privacy who don't believe their personal information is all that interesting to anyone else and certainly shouldn't be out there for just anyone to read.

The second are those who, even if they are perhaps tempted to write something about themselves, feel strongly that they aren't the types to jump on bandwagons, to follow the rest like mindless sheep. But then, they probably don't have Facebook accounts as part of their desire to remain independent.

Which one are you?