{"id":539,"date":"2007-08-17T09:05:38","date_gmt":"2007-08-17T17:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/?p=539"},"modified":"2007-08-17T09:05:38","modified_gmt":"2007-08-17T17:05:38","slug":"the-how-do-you-know-field-in-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/2007\/08\/17\/the-how-do-you-know-field-in-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"The "how do you know…" field in Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Facebook, when you’re defining the relationship you have with someone else, they ask the question:<\/p>\n

“How do you know [Friend Name]?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can see an example of the options here<\/a> (ignore the “skip this step” petition.)<\/p>\n

The issue I have is that the question “how do you know…” is in the present<\/strong> tense, but the answers are all past<\/strong> tense. From the available answers, it makes it seem like the question you’re really being asked is “how did you meet [Friend Name]” which is different.<\/p>\n

When I first started using Facebook, I interpreted the question as “how did you meet…” and then filled in the appropriate answer. For example, I met Adam W. through Fil so I filled that in. The problem is, now when I look at my friends list, it says “You know Adam through Fil.” I consider Adam a friend, and this reads like he’s just a friend-of-a-friend.<\/p>\n

So, I’ve basically taken to not filling in the relationship details in these cases, because I feel like it sends the message “we’re not really friends, we just know each other through a mutual person.” All of that could be avoided if they just changed the presentation\/grammar. Has anyone else had the same problem, or am I overanalyzing Facebook?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Facebook, when you’re defining the relationship you have with someone else, they ask the question: “How do you know [Friend Name]?” You can see an example of the options here (ignore the “skip this step” petition.) The issue I have is that the question “how do you know…” is in the present tense, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TCqO-8H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}