Proclamations of love. Daily intimacies. Daily diaries overflowing with mundanities. Often hastily scribed, sometimes bubbling with excitement, and perhaps an overuse of punctuation.
Don't you love social networking sites? All of a sudden, once-lonely Leona has a million 'friends' or 'followers' and boy, is she embracing the share-fest.
The voyeur in me loves it - and sure, it's heartening to know that I am not alone in my imperfect, angst-ridden life.
But the communicator in me can't help but cringe.
The fact is that all communication should be about 'targeting' or niching messages specific to an audience, something that is lost to the average Facebook user. Not every message is interesting, relevant or suitable for every person and is dependent on a range of demographics - age, education, culture and so on.
Despite privacy options that enable us to distill our friends into lists, unfortunately most people don't realise that the more "friends" you accumulate, the more care needs to be taken in exactly what is said or shared.
Okay, I know it takes the fun out of it. It's the spontaneous, visceral 'posts' I enjoy - the friend in the thrall of jubilation, the one needing advice and counsel, the one having a bad day, the one (usually me) not afraid to post a heartfelt expletive.
But the cruel reality is that the more obscure the degrees of connection to your world of Facebook friends, the more caution we all need to take in who, what, where and when we choose to post our feeling, thought or insight of the moment.
Spontaneous communications are wonderful between intimate friends, but as the degrees of separation get into their double digits, it is wisest to practice some self-censorship.
Start with your motivations.
Remember that your commentary on sites like Facebook and Twitter are a window to your world. Do you want to impress, inspire, titillate, shock, amuse, inform, entertain, excite?
From the great 'why', the 'what' will follow and please, don't forget the most important consideration in my view, 'who'. Who wants to know?
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