Disjointed Accounts

Am I the only one weirded out by all those joint accounts cropping up at various social networking sites? You know, those accounts shared by two people, mostly couples. For one thing, those accounts look and sound stupid. John Mary Smith Watson. WTF, right?! Yeah, those couples do it to express their love for each other, an expression of the what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine adage... but can't they express their affection in other ways? Sharing a single account is just so impractical. For one thing, two people can't share the exact same group of friends. They might share a lot of friends, especially if they're already married, but they can't share all their friends. It's simply impossible. Like those buddies of mine from way back that i haven't been in contact with for years. I've stayed connected with them through email and social networking sites, but i do not know their spouses... and I don't feel comfortable sharing my personal information to people I don't know, even if they're the better halves of my closest friends. Also, it creates confusion when you post something on their wall or comment on something they've posted, only to have a reply made by the other person. You never know for sure who the hell you're talking to! A few weeks ago, I told one of my closest friends what I thought of the account he shared with his wife. He told me I just couldn't relate because I've never been in love with someone as much as he loves his wife. Okay. That was a bit uncalled for, but what the heck. That was that. Until i sent him a private message which was actually pretty harmless, but could be misconstrued by an extremely insecure and jealous person. it was right after we went to a party and we saw his ex girlfriend from 17 years back, who was there with her husband. They talked for a few minutes, together with the girl's husband, while I mingled with the other guests. I left early, and I forgot to say goodbye to them. When i got home, as an afterthought, I sent him a private message. i asked him if he got the girl's number, and if they've already planned a date. LOL. The thought that his wife might read the message first did occur to me, but i assumed that his wife would understand that i was just kidding.

What happened next? My friend didn't get mad at me, even though his wife didn't talk to him for days and demanded that he move out of the house. Well, he got pretty pissed at first, but he knew the message was pretty harmless and it was obviously meant as a joke, so his anger didn't last long. he just told me that he finally understood why joint accounts were stupid. So did he finally create a separate account? Not exactly. He deleted the joint account, and just told his wife to create a new account for herself if she still wants to have a social networking account.

At least that's one less joint account on my list of friends. Only 5 more to go...