What Box Do You Belong In?

For years I’ve battled with the idea that people don’t belong in boxes. My generation was raised on the thought that each of us is special just for being an individual. We were told that people can’t be so easily categorized, labeled and shelved in the way we’d sometime like to do.

As a professional marketing director I’d love to be able to say “25-30 year-olds believe” or “all Jewish people like to…”, but we’ve spent many, many years discovering that people cannot be categorized in this manner. So, imagine my surprise, when Mark Zuckerberg, leader of all things “this generation”, asked us to do just that- put our friends, family members and acquaintances into general boxes.

Facebook is a phenomenon unlike any other networking site before it’s time. Connecting nearly 800 million users and encompassing everything from your grandmother’s phone number to your breast feeding consultant’s blog to your home boy’s playlist the site is vast, full of information and used by multiple generations (all my grandparents are now on Facebook!)

For years now we’ve had the ability to sort “friends” into lists that made sense to us as users, but with the launch of Google+ and the facelift Facebook has recently announced, “lists” are becoming more popular than ever, and are even an expectation of Facebook’s that the tool will be used. In fact, Facebook has gone as far as to pre-sort your friends for you. On the left hand side of your Facebook page, you’ll see the lists that have been created: Close Friends, Acquaintances, Family, all of your past employers, schools, etc.

While at first glance this seems like a great tool, I’m having trouble reconciling these pre-disposed categories with how I view people in everyday life. For instance, my sisters are most definitely family, but they are also “close friends.” And while my second cousin-once removed is “family” I don’t necessarily need or want her to see the family updates.

In this day when we “socially” network with everyone from the man selling balloons at the farmer’s market (thanks for the alien on Sunday!) to one’s own spouse (love you honey!), putting people into boxes has become more of a hurdle than ever before.

I’ve already created a new list: people I can’t remember. Why don’t I just remove these folks? Now that Facebook “unfriends” are viewable, I’d hate to admit to someone I can’t remember that I don’t know who they are!

How do you “box” the ones you know?

The opinions expressed here are the blogger's and not necessarily those of the local editor's or anyone affiliated with Patch.