Thoughts About Facebook

Three years ago, I did my Discipleship Training School DTS at a Youth With A Mission YWAM base that's situated in the middle of the Dutch countryside. So sometimes it does feel like I'm out of touch with the world out here. So, during my DTS and in terms of what things that were on the news; like things that were happening in different parts of world, I was blissfully unaware. If something big happened, the whole base would be buzzing with the news, or more usually, I'd find out on Facebook, which isn't the best place to hear the news (however, I don't think that there's any media cooperation that present the news in an unbiased way like they claim, but Facebook is the worst, but I'd get there in a moment). So you could say I was living my life with my head in the sand… given that, at the time, I didn't have a tablet or a smartphone and so couldn't download podcasts or check the news online. In recent years I've challenged myself to stay informed of world news, but I'll never loose that sense of amusement at how one or two topics can be blown out the water on the news and on social media… be it global warming, the tension in Burundi or Donald Trump's call for an Iowa rematch (due to fraud; supposedly). These are random topics on the news now, by the way. I've been regularly listening to the BBC's News Hour just to keep up with what's going and I must say that Global Warming is a very popular topic.

On the other hand Facebook is the absolutely worst place to learn anything about what's going on in the world. Thanks to Obama supporters among my list of friends I did learn, via Facebook, that Obama had been elected in 2012 for a second term in office. Yes, it's a great place to keep up with what everyone of my 400+ friends, but honesty, a single typo (unintentionally or otherwise) or auto correct will have people believing that something that isn't happening. For example, on Friday I updated my status to: "My trip of a lifetime begins now… got hours of travel to get there and loads of sitting to get to N Zealand. Ticket was a gift from a good friend… #seeyousoon #surpriseadventure" so the whole world seemed to think I was off to New Zealand, unaware that there's a province in the Netherlands called Zealand (Dutch: Zeeland). I wanted to see how the world would react. The basis of my current theory, thanks to this post, is don't believe everything you read on Facebook, you just gotta take it with a pinch of salt, like you do with everything else in life. It also shows how well people actually know me. I'm one of those people who are have the unfortunate habit of telling absolutely everyone what's happening in my life, travel wise. So if I was really traveling to New Zealand I would have, in my excitement, posted something about going to New Zealand within hours of buying the tickets. My housemates and colleagues would have also known months ago, again down to my excitement about having bought the tickets and that I was another step closer to a long time dream coming true.

I had an awesome time in Zeeland with my friend and the adventure was well worth it, despite long journeys getting to and from the town my friend lives in. More news coming soon.