The Sun-Herald

Just good friends, or Facebook Official?

The other week I asked after an acquaintance's long-term boyfriend and she told me they'd split up. "It was on Facebook," she added, a trifle accusatorily.

And so it was. In fact, if I'd have checked my news feeds (the streaming updates on what your Facebook friends are doing day and night) two days earlier I could have seen the news breaking live online. My friend's relationship status on her profile had changed from 'in a relationship' to 'it's complicated,' to 'single.' Such is the way of the digital world.
It has its advantages. Those who were more vigilant than I about monitoring their friend's life online would have been in the know before they next saw her, so they could have avoided embarrassing her by mentioning it in public.
It's one of Facebook's spookier functions: a sort of online Woman's Day, not of celebrity lives and relationships, but those of your friends (or at least the ones who broadcast them in detail, and it's amazing how many do). It's created a bewildering etiquette minefield tricky even for the generation born with a mouse in their hand, and downright confounding for Gen X pen and paper babies like me.
Here's what happened next: a fortnight after the split, my friend's ex changed his Facebook status again, to "in a relationship." Not only did he appear to have found a new woman with unseemly haste, he'd also made her 'Facebook Official.' This appalled my buddy. "It's publicly humiliating," she said.
'Facebook Official,' you see, is the new barometer for commitment. It's the digital equivalent of ID bracelets, rings or other conspicous love tokens. You're going steady, you switch your status. It sounds trivial and foolish and takes me back to high school, but once again, it's amazing how many people old enough to know better are embracing this electronic romantic etiquette.
I had lunch with a thirty-something friend this week. She's a free-wheeling single who's happily dating a couple of men, and in no hurry for commitment. To her horror, after she'd dated a man twice last month he changed his Facebook status to 'in a relationship.' He also asked her to update hers likewise. She ran so fast she left a dust trail. "Weird and clingy," she scoffed.
I asked her why she felt the need to broadcast her status at all, as it's purely voluntary - you can include as much or as little information about yourself as you like and simply ignore the six relationship categories ('married,' 'engaged,' 'single,' 'in a relationship,' 'it's complicated,' and 'in an open relationship.'). "I want people on Facebook to know I'm single - I'll meet more men that way," she said. Fair point - and it's reflected these days in offline life, too. You can buy cute accessories such as the Singelringen to advertise your single status and attract playmates.
Similarly, it's enticing to share the glow of new romance by giving jewellery, sending flowers - or telling the world via Facebook by displaying the funky little heart that illustrates the 'in a relationship,' status.
There's a quaint and rather touching formality to it all and in times when ambiguity rules the mating game it brings a refreshing dose of clarity to the confusion, a way of knowing where you stand. But as my buddy's experiences - and the endless dating dilemmas crowding the pages of online agony aunts - show, it's a whole new world of potential trouble.
The instant nature of the online world means that in a rush of hormone-induced euphoria you can press a button and risk losing your credibility, mystique, power and even your partner at one keystroke. While no-one but the two of you witnesses the rejected ring or the binned bouquet, a Facebook status let-down, which potientially 28 million people can see, is brutally public.
I think for fun there should be a 'just good friends' category as well as the current six but there's another even better one. It's that brief but intriguing phrase used by celebrities when pestered about their love lives by nosy journalists like me. It's far more suggestive and elegant than ignoring the whole subject or opting for the rather neurotic 'it's complicated.' It hints at a world of mysterious fun that's just too precious - or perhaps too scandalous - to share:
'it's private.'