Hello, rabid readers!
Blimey, I can't believe it's been over two months since I last updated this. This is terrible, please excuse me. In all honesty, I have had a lot on, but even so... there are loads of things that have happened that I've thought I must blog about, and I just haven't got around to doing, like the brilliant demo at Hinkley I was at about a month ago... anyway...
Today I'm going to talk about Facebook, and what it means to have someone as a friend. The idea to write about this comes from a conversation I had recently with some people at a theatre company I'm involved with. (I won't say which theatre company it is, because I'm going to say some quite negative things about them in this post... and regardless of what I'm going to say, they are a fantastic company and I've done some great work with them.)
Anyway... a while back I realised that one of the people I work with there had deleted me as a friend on Facebook. I asked her about it, and she explained that because of her position within the group, she's not allowed to have certain people as friends on Facebook. I find this kind of policy a little odd; I'm not entirely sure what the hierarchy system is, and I'm not entirely sure that even the company understand it fully. The person implied it had something to do with my age - which is a little strange, because she has three people who are actually younger than me on her friends' list - but anyway, that's just what made me realise my interest in this debate; the ins and outs of this person's Facebook account are not really what I want to talk about.
The point I want to discuss is that this company apparently has lots of obscure policies for who its members are allowed to have contact with in the outside world, and I think this is essentially power for power's sake. I have to say that the group has members aged from 7 - 25, and some of the older people in the group can be promoted to 'helpers' or 'session assistants', which actually means that while they don't have any official power, they are paid by the establishment to take more of a lead role at training sessions. Apparently the policy is that people who are in this role are not allowed to have people under 18 as friends on Facebook - although this is obviously not entirely accurate, as age is not a factor in my case. The policy is very confusing, even the people who apparently know the most about it struggled to explain it to me when I talked to them, but the basic point is that the company tries to control the contact people are allowed to have with one another on the outside world.
Personally, I think that a person's Facebook account is their own, and no one else should have any authority over who people are allowed to contact on it (with a few exceptions obviously - you couldn't have a jury member being allowed to contact a defendant on Facebook!) However, in this occurrence I don't actually see what these boundaries are intended to achieve. I've come across people who are really good friends at the sessions and probably would be in real life, and yet a policy that has been enforced on them has prevented them from being friends online. Obviously I understand child protection concerns - but there are three reasons why the Facebook policy actually doesn't affect child safety at all:
1) If someone is intent upon grooming another person, they will do it, regardless of whether they are friends with that person on Facebook. Recently there have been a lot of stories in the news about Jimmy Savile and the sex abuse scandal - Jimmy Savile did not have Facebook, and managed to molest a lot of people anyway. Facebook doesn't make it that much easier.
2) The power thing. I've heard this so often, and every time I hate it. There is a school of thought that believes that if someone has power over you at work, school or on a course, then they cannot be friends with you outside because that is an abuse of their power, particularly if you are different ages. I think that is utter rubbish. If someone has power over you, they can't be your friend within the hours that you are in that position, but outside of those hours, that becomes your personal life, which should be kept separate from everything else. When I was at school or college, I didn't think of my teachers as my friends when I was in the building, but if I saw them outside for whatever reason, I would think of them as that. Why not? I've had teachers as friends on Facebook while they were teaching me, it's fine. In the case of this theatre company, the session assistants actually have extremely minimal power anyway, so what difference does it honestly make?
3) Policies such as this are implemented not because anyone actually believes that they will serve anyone's best interests, but because the establishment wants to be seen to be doing the right thing. There seems to be a perception that because something is frowned upon by some people, then it is out-and-out wrong and there is no room for discussion. When I was having this conversation with some people from my theatre company, someone said, 'But George, it's illegal!' I asked them under what Act of Parliament it was illegal. They were a bit unsure and said, 'Um, child safety laws...' The bottom line is that there is actually no law against it - and even if there was, it would be a law born more out of paranoia than actual sense, logic or reason. I have been involved in other companies that are fine with people of different hierarchical status having each other as friends on Facebook, and I find that it's much easier to be relaxed about these things. Imposing unnecessary boundaries only makes things more formal than they need to be.
I don't hold the position in the company that affects who you can have on your Facebook list. There is a part of me that wishes that I did so I could rebel, but that's just the mischievous part of me that likes to cause trouble, and I wouldn't want to cause a confrontation just for the sake of it. However, if I ever was to hold that position, I would make it very clear that I don't intend to stick by that policy. When I told this to the people I was having this discussion with, they told me that if I didn't stick to it, I would just be out, but I don't actually think that would necessarily be the outcome. True, initially someone may try to insist that I followed protocol if I was going to stay involved, but I honestly believe that if I was determined enough and I talked them through my reasoning, it is very likely that they would come around to my way of thinking - or at the very least, turn a blind eye to me. I've come across situations like that my whole life, and the vast majority of the time, they go my way in the end.
Regular readers of my blog will know that at the end, I always mention someone that I respect and admire. Today the person is the writer Germaine Greer. I've admired her for a while, but I felt the need to refer to her after a video she submitted to Sunday Morning Live about free speech. I'll link to the video below, but needless to say I agree with every word:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0101jqx
I'll see you next time on my blog. Cheerio!
