Keeping a double life organized must be hard enough without the intrusion of social media. One man learned the hard way this week that Facebook only allows users to link their relationship status to one person at a time.
According to an Associated Press report, a corrections officer in Seattle was outed as a bigamist after one of his wives found him on Facebook. The man, Alan O’Neill, is now facing bigamy charges.
The court documents show that O’Neill married one woman in 2001. He then left his wife, changed his name, and remarried in 2009. O’Neill’s first wife found out about his second wife through a “People You May Know” suggestion on the Facebook sidebar. She and O’Neill, though separated, had not been divorced.
According to the AP, O’Neill has been placed on administrative leave and is awaiting a court hearing for bigamy charges later this month.
Do you remember that moment in The Social Network when Mark Zuckerberg is prodded about the relationship status of some girl in one of his classes? It’s like the “aha” moment halfway through the film, where Zuck has an epiphany about the one thing that would make Facebook popular to millions of people around the world.
“People don’t walk around with a sign on them that says….”
And with that (or so the legend goes), the concept of listing your “relationship status” on Facebook was born.
Now, years later, it’s hard to argue against the relationship status as one of the biggest influencing factors on the site’s success. How many potential suitors have checked someone out on Facebook before they make a move. “Is she single?” “Does he have a girlfriend (and if so, am I prettier than her)?”
But a new app assumes that you’ve grown tired of all of the other distractions on Facebook – the photos, statuses, Farmville requests, and various Open Graph apps. What people want is just to see which of their friends are still single, and check in on whether or not any of them have gotten married (or divorced, schadenfreude).
That’s the basic premise of RelationBook, which once you authorize to access your Facebook profile provides a searchable and filterable breakdown of all of your friends’ relationship statuses.
First, decide if you want to look at all males or all females. Then apply the next filter(s). Single, In a relationship, engaged, married, it’s complicated – they’re all there. Notably absent from the filter options are “in civil union” and “in a domestic partnership,” two newer options that Facebook launched for their LGBT community.
You can check out the list view:
Or the image view:
But either way you look at it, some could see it as a bit creepy. But then again, what the hell is Facebook good for, if not to bring out the inner creep in all of us?
Facebook is a great place for reconnecting with people and helping to maintain relationships.
In fact, many users are vigilant about keeping their relationship status up-to-date and informing everyone about all the changes that take place in their lives.
While you may not realize it, Facebook is keeping track of all these relationships you have so neatly organized in your profile. Yes, they know what you’re up to and they have the facts and figures to prove it.
What kinds of facts and figures, you ask? According to this new infographic from WorldWideLearn.Com, they know who you were with, how long you were with them, what music you listened to, and how it all ended up.
It’s packed with interesting statistics on when relationships typically begin, when they end, who will say they are satisfied, and who will not. It’s a different way of looking at the relationships in our lives.
At the very least, it is an interesting look at our musical tastes at the beginning of a relationship versus just after a breakup. I think it’s worth taking a look at.
