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So I just read Mitch's blog contemplating on his last four years at Uni. And somewhere in the same vein here is some sort of York-specific life lessons.
Mitch contemplates what he actually learned in his past 4 years of university life.
This all started with a discussion between me and my housemates (who are usually the springboard for blogs). I am a reluctant Facebooker - I've never gone for the rest of them, Myspace, Bebo (I'm afraid my knowledge runs out there) - whilst the girls will organise a night out on it, I sort of have a gander every now and then, and if I didn't use it for chasing up Yorker writers it'd rarely get a use.
So then I dropped the bombshell - if you know me, you realise this happens a lot, but this was one that silenced even the girls - I rejected someone as a friend on Facebook.
Cue Silence.
One finally splutted, "What?" so I repeated it (it was one of those - oops, I shouldn't have said anything moments) and they all stared. So I stared back, before repeating - "What's wrong with that? I didn't know them!" The reply came: "You. Never. Do. That" The long and short of it was they spent quite some time explains to me that a Facebook friend isn't quite the same as a real friend (Hmm).
So, this got me thinking - what else does one not do on the book of the face?
One reply was not to write too many times on someone's wall before they've replied - it suggests that you're desperate, a bit needy, and possibly, just possibly, spend too much time on your computer.
Another, seemingly quite obvious one - be wary of what you write. This escapes a friend of mine who doesn't quite understand that what you write can be witnessed by a million and one other people. I do wonder about her sanity sometimes. And especially her relationship.
The current big one. Applications. Seriously?
A comedy one that came up in the middle of writing this was elongated, lengthy, emotional notes. We just heard how one of our housemate's friends wrote a long note (in a post-break up haze) about her favourite smell (of theirs), her favourite memory (of theirs) and the exact, blow-by-blow account of their break-up, "just so everyone knew the full story".
Love, seriously, no-one really wants to know every detail. Your friends will want to hear the bits that make him sound like an idiot, and the bits that they can say, "I knew he'd do that/he's such a typical man/what a bastard" to. His friends will want to hear the bits that make you sound like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction so they can mock you whilst getting him plastered. Neither party wants to hear the other side, so don't make it public knowledge.
And finally, the biggest no-no in Facebook etiquette?
Explicit Facebook statuses. Whilst I either quite enjoy, or at least don't mind, things in the vein of Jeff is... hungover/tired/plugging the event he's attending, the biggest no-no on Facebook is any references to STDs, breakups or other emotional traumas.
Why? Mainly because of point one. You aren't actually friends with the majority of people you're "friends" with. So they don't care that your now ex-boyfriend/girlfriend gave you a departing present that only a round of prescribed medication will shift.
Facebook social taboo number 1 really annoys me, and I'm one of the worst for breaking it. I always reject friend requests from people I don't know or care about (Yes, I did go to the same primary school as you. No, I've not spoken to you since, or even live in the same town as you any more). A few months ago I did something that's an even bigger social taboo, and that's actually removed people as a friends (normally those people that fit into the above category). I got fed up of having stories in my feed about people I didn't care about, getting stupid application requests from people I once worked with in my first job 4 years ago, and haven't seen since, as well as having those people be able to see all my private information. Does that make me a bad person?
Application invites are the worst. No, I don't want to put anything in your aquarium thanks, and no you are not one of my hottest friends.
Rejecting friend requests is not a taboo - adding people you don't know is!
Henry's right - it's the people who go round adding everyone they've ever met (and quite a few they probably haven't but were a few years apart in school and vaguely recognise them) who are actually the problem. That and the people who accept the requests.
Definitely agree with the status updates - I see far too many that are informing the world of what are often extremely personal matters. Either I'm going to hear about the emotional trauma outside Facebook anyway and so don't need a status to tell me or it's a private matter that I wouldn't even ask about. In either case, there's absolutely no cause to advertise it.
I find it interesting that all the above comments are males', it seems you guys are a little more realistic about things... I spend more time on facebook that I'd be comfortable revealing, and a day without facebook-stalking is obviously incomplete...
And yes, I do add most people I meet, but is that really a problem? Ultimately, what matters is people's ability to distinguish between reality/facebook -- although that might be a bit difficult at times.
I see Facebook as an extension to my reality, a tool used to help me keep in touch with my friends and organise my social life - especially important as I've not been studying at York for the past year and I don't want to lose contact with everyone upon my return. For the same reason I have no problem writing notes/updating my status with kind of personal things, especially recently when a lot of lies and rumours were being spread, so I wanted them to hear it from me, rather than anyone else.
Marie, I'm comfortable revealing I spend large amounts of time on Facebook and my stalking tendencies are at the level where some of my friends are probably surprised if I don't pick up on things. Appropriately, I only saw this article through one of my friend's Facebook profiles and one of the applications the Yorker probably doesn't object to - its own. She'll be very proud her constant plugging has worked.
I will add everyone who posts in this article saying they reject people as a friend in the near future. You wont know who i am or when i will add you. If you reject me i will feel personally hurt, and you KNOW that makes you a bad person.
Even if I send you a polite message explaining why I rejected your friend request, #7? 
Apparently un-tagging photos of yourself is bad etiquette.
But #9, don't people do that all the time (when they look drunk)?
Untagging photos is primordial if one tries to maintain a certain image -- but drunken/embarassing photos are generally quite funny and should be kept.
However, people whose newsfeed don't publish whose walls they write on are such a hindrance to proper stalking. tssk.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs
This video shows the difference between Facebook and 'real life', and rather comically too 
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