Recently, on my facebook feed, I saw the broken heart icon appear between two friends..

Oh no, I thought. Not because the two had broken up, but because they had broadcast it to the entire world. As I stalked through their profiles, their photos had changed. Any mention of each other was completely erased. Awkward.

Do you comment or do you not? Do you call them up to talk about their announcement? An unhappy announcement so different from my cousin inadvertently announcing his engagement when I saw a ton of wall posts congratulating him. I think my parents and grandparents were slighted that they were not told first.

A friend recently (lightheartedly) admonished my distaste for relationship advertising online. He said simply he came from a different generation—aka 2-3 years younger than me—and he doesn’t worry about such things. Yeah, so someone broke up…you talk to them through a wall post or a phone txt. Or if you see an ex got married because a mutual friend was tagged in photos and you knew the ex didn’t want you to see…well it’s the same as meeting that ex in person with a baby in tow and big rock on her finger—you grit your teeth and sound out a “congratulations”. And you can change your relationship status whenever you want to.

Granted, this friend works at a company involving Facebook.

In light of recent events, I changed my privacy settings immediately so that certain parts are only viewable to certain people. Despite the fact that I am at ease with my online life—after having too much online drama in college, I am uncomfortable with relationships advertising online.

Back in the day, I used to write long entries on my blog/journal about the crushes, the rejections, the moments of hallelujah! I assumed everybody cared, but over time, I realized that most people didn’t care how anxious and high strung I was about the next steps. And then later, I figured that people often remember the worst but never remember the best. Thus for me, no labels and always the status “it’s complicated”.

For now, I’ll choose the people on an individual basis through non-broadcast mediums to spam them with my exploits and drama.