Joint facebook accounts are never appropriate unless you are over the age of 70. If some of you are scratching your heads wondering what the hell a joint facebook account is, it's probably because you don't have enough friends who went to BYU or its lesser related entities.
Joint accounts are when a husband and wife create an account with both of their names for all of their friends. One can only guess their motivation for doing this. Is it that they can't bear to not share EVERYTHING? Is it to prevent the wife from reconnecting with her old high school sweetheart? Is it so that all parties are aware of event invitations? I don't know, but my best guess is that it has something to do with the law of chastity and not breaking it.
I don't take marital fidelity lightly, but joint accounts are such a bizarre, weird, off-putting , obnoxious, ultimately ineffective way of curbing adultery it is never okay. If you really want to cheat on your spouse you will. I understand that facebook has been the vehicle for many broken homes, but the fix is not in facebook, it's in therapy.
Why is it rude? Well, let's say you're an old high college girlfriend of the wife. You would like to share some details about your boy troubles or menstrual pains or any other intimate detail of your life. Suddenly everything you say on facebook is put through the husband filter. You wonder--is this also happening to their e-mails? Can I e-mail my friend or will they share that too? Can I even call her or are the phones tapped? Can we still hang out? Meet up? Where is the freaking line?
Also, it creates a situation where I'm forced to be facebook friends with one's spouse even though I really have no common interests. Suddenly my facebook feed is full of HIS football updates. Or HER pregnancy complaints. (Sorry for the super sexist examples, but they're drawn from reality). You could click "ignore" on the facebook-couple-blob, but it would cut you off from the spouse that you actually like (in a totally platonic way. Pipe down.)
These are also the types of people who would object to joining a member of the opposite sex for a business lunch. Or for whom the idea of serving on a co-ed church committee causes such mental anguish about the unlikely possibility of temptation that they would rather not serve. Stop sexualizing situations that are not sexual. The end.
Now if you're old and all your friends are the same anyway, it kinda makes sense. I will allow a pass for anyone who has adult grandchildren. The rest of you need to cut it out.
9 comments:
Here here! It's supremely awkward. I don't want to make a comment to my friend when I know her husband, who I've never met, is going to read it. Also, I don't know what to comment on, because I don't know when it's her and when it's her husband. Gah!
I had the exact same thought today. I've been noticing this trend with an increasing number of friends.
Did you ever read the comic strip "Zits"? There's a couple in the strip that goes by "Richandamy" because they are always irrevocably intertwined at all times. I get the same claustrophobic feelings from couples on Facebook, particularly in they run their names together like that.
There was a Sunday fireside-type thing at BYU for married and engaged couples a few months ago. Apparently this joint facebook account thing was strongly recommended. I wonder if this is rooted in the theory that "boys will be boys" and it's the wife's responsibility to reign in the husband because he can't help himself. Gag me.
Maret, I think you are hilarious and I'm a huge fan of your blog. This particular post made me laugh out loud.
I personally haven't even heard of a joint facebook account (I guess that means I've been graduated from BYU long enough), but one of my biggest pet peeves is joint email accounts! I just don't get it. Email is FREE. Every time I see ericandnicolejones@blahblah.com I pass several judgments about those people (I won't share them now).
Ugh. I have a few friends who have such joint accounts. It's obnoxious and silly.
One time, I commented on a such a friend's Facebook post about something ridiculous (it was basically one of those silly email forwards that have no basis in reality or facts)... and her HUSBAND replied back and told me to go to hell and to shove a GUN in my mouth for my opinion. WTF? I don't even know him.
So, yes... I'm with you, Maret. You'll never see Em or me with an Emilosh ShepAlder Facebook account.
Hi! Found your blog from Mhana's. I feel the need to weigh in because we have a joint FB account. Not that I expect to change anyone's opinions here, but here is why we started: laziness. We only had one slow computer so instead of wanting to sign in/out when we wanted to use it, we shared, as did a few other friends/family members. Jointly we only have about 170 friends, 60% of which are family. The rest of the people on there are close enough friends to know that my hubby is just a FB lurker and that I do 99.9% of the posts. If they need to share something personal with me, well, they're my friends and they can talk to me in person (gasp!) rather than through social media. When we got new phones with 'net capability, I asked if he wanted to get his own account, mainly because I thought he'd be annoyed to sift through my 'liked' pages. He was fine with the way things are. It has nothing to do with not trusting each other. We have friends of the opposite sex. I don't pace the house frantically with visions of hotel rooms in my head because he's an hour late getting off of work. I don't glare at the screen when one of his high school friends sends a message. We have a rock solid marriage. It just isn't a big deal to share something like a FB account. So I'm fine with people thinking we're silly or obnoxious (insert quote here by Rhett Butler about not caring), but please don't judge us that we're doing it to keep tabs on each other.
Lauren--fair enough. But from the majority of people who have commented and talked to me about this, keeping tabs is the primary motivation for most people who do it.
You're just unique in your laziness!
I have a friend who had a joint account. We will call them TomandMandy Jones. Then, one day, without explanation, suddenly it was just Mandy Jones. Where did Tom go? I'm confused!
Did he die? Are they getting a divorce? Did they decide that a joint account is lame? What's going on???
I'll be honest, I don't really have strong feelings on joint Facebook accounts one way or the other. The one thing that tips me over to the "no" side of the question is the way they adversely affect the grammar of my news feed: WilliamandMary Jones is now friends with Jake McJakerson. Ick.
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