As of late, I’ve begun to get over my fear of social media.  Ok, maybe “fear” is a little melodramatic… let’s go with “discomfort.” 

It’s not the idea of online networking that I found unsettling; in fact, the summer before I started college in 2005 (back when Facebook was for college students only), I was dying to get my college-issued .edu email address so badly that I went to Emerson’s website and tried typing in variations of my name and default passwords, just hoping that an email address would materialize and subsequently allow me to join Facebook (a little sad yes, but don’t judge me—admitting this makes me vulnerable).

I also remember the day when, upon logging in, my good friend Facebook asked me, “What are you doing right now?” Well, looking over my shoulder and wondering, “Is the voice coming from inside the house?”

And then the updates started happening. At first, they just sort of awkwardlytrickled in and hesitated to reveal much detail. “Person O’ Personson is at the library.” “That weird guy from high school who picked his nose a lot is in class.”

It didn’t take long for these updates to become both more detailed and more frequent. “Dude McDudeBro is going to class, then might get some coffee, then has a podiatrist’s appointment, then will do homework and probably eat something and then go to bed.” At this point, however, the updates were still about pretty superficial things.

But then they started to look like this: “Something something isn’t sure what to do about life right now,” or, and this one’s my personal favorite, “Someone someoneton is.” Whoa. That just got real.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that I’ve always assumed that nothing that I do is interesting enough to justify broadcasting it over the Tubes. I’ve since come to realize that, yes, Facebook, Twitter, etc. can be effective networking and marketing tools, which is one of the main reasons why I feel more comfortable with them now (although I still don’t have a personal Twitter account).

A few days ago, I ran into a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a while. She Twitters frequently and links her Twitter account to her Facebook, so I see the updates. The day before I ran into her out in the world, her updates went something like this: “Someone someone’s world just fell apart,” and then, “…is trying to get my mind off of this,” and finally, “…is done with men forever.” Based on these updates and subsequent comments from her friends (“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Let me know if you need anything”), I deduced that she and her boyfriend had broken up.

So I run into her and start, as many people do, by asking, “How are you?” I did this even though I knew what had happened and that she wasn’t happy about it. Her reply: “Oh, well, Blah and I broke up.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply. Should I pretend that I had no idea? It felt a little creepy that I knew that, but she put the information out there, so why should I worry? But if I acted like I knew nothing about it, wouldn’t that be lying?

I decided to take the latter option and feign ignorance, and yes, as it turned out, it did feel like lying; I felt dirty all over and it was all Twitter’s fault.

So take this as a warning, readers. If you haven’t already faced an awkward, Facebook/Twitter-induced personal interaction, be prepared, because it’s going to happen sooner or later. Just rest assured that it is possible to pick up the pieces and move on.