What the Hell is Ask.Fm?

Following a recent drama which took place on Facebook today about a girl who "bitched" about another girl (are we meant to be shocked?) on www.askfm.com, I’m mortified to see the reaction of about 50 friends and acquaintances / people I actually don’t know.

Status upon status polluted my home page, all commenting on this ‘drama’ which is supposedly news worthy. In protest to this stupidity I refuse to give any examples of what has been said against this unlucky ask.fm user who thought it would be a good idea to insult people on a site which publicly publishes your “secret” answers.

Ask.fm is a website in which you sign up as usual, and are asked questions about yourself such as “who would you first call if you won the lottery?” and “are you the type of person with lots of friends or just a few close ones?”. Once you have answered these questions they are published and ‘friends’ can view the answers anonymously. This may seem like harmless and childish fun, however it is easy to see how these questions, and indeed their answers, can be very damaging depending on the way in which they are answered.

My question is how, in the race for new innovative ideas to create a new form of social networking or indeed, something completely new, are we lowering the bar? Or perhaps we are just facilitating the recreational needs of today’s society. However I find it very sad to think that something as trivial as this is what the public want. As seen on twitter and Facebook, it is clear to see that people give great importance to their daily lives, assuming each time that everyone else / their ‘followers’ will be interested.

I would say mind sets like this are built upon programs which glamorise fame and popularity such as “Made in Chelsea” and “The Only Way is Essex”. Despite the fact that I cannot claim to have never have watched and enjoyed these programs, I do think that they give a bad impression of how to succeed in life. For example, “The Only Way is Essex” portrays the life of young people who have made their success through their ignorance and eccentric / (to an extent) anti social behaviour. This is not how the majority of us will be able to make our name and money in life, but since we aspire to be like them we are convinced of the importance of our own personal lives. Or perhaps we struggle to reach the same level of recognition as these people.

But by giving out personal information like this, we are actually destroying our own privacy and the repercussions can be seen in cases such as the girl who bitched about other girls on ask.fm.

An Interesting Video on Facebook Privacy.

We are living in a time where privacy is almost nonexistent, and the stupidity / slip ups of our past (i.e. our Facebook activity, photos, comments, statuses) will come back to haunt us in the future. It has already been an issue of great concern that employers these days actually check our profiles to judge our character. On the 17^th of October 2012 a man lost his job at Ontario clothing store after posting an offensive comment on Facebook about Amanda Todd. People are even being sued over Facebook and Twitter comments, the internet is no longer a place of freedom and lawlessness; we now have laws in a virtual, almost nonexistent world. Even Obama has administered a law against the editing of a photo which was released of him shooting a shot gun. The internet is clearly going through a change, bringing a new definition to the word “public domain”.

We should all be wary of the long term repercussions when deciding to join needless, trivial sites such as ask.fm, as clearly the negatives will outweigh the positives in the end.