Voyeurism, Facebook-style

My wife has been spending a lot of time on Facebook, and I’m glad to report that her efforts have actually turned up some interesting discoveries.

For instance, she’s chanced upon accidental “wormholes” that lead her to famous people’s Facebook pages.

It happened when she was perusing the friends of one of her friends. Now, normally on Facebook, people’s sites are blocked unless they’ve accepted you as a “friend” (through an e-mail confirmation). So imagine my wife’s surprise when she stumbled upon… Sean Lennon’s Facebook page.

It seems that some people don’t bother to put up a security block when they’re setting up an account, and their Facebook pages become — yes, accidental wormholes to other dimensions. Sean Lennon’s dimension, for instance, is a place where famous musicians mingle with famous artists and famous supermodels — we couldn’t help noticing that the young Lennon is pals with London supermodel Anouck Lepère, musicians Fred Frith, Bob Geldof, Lisa Loeb and Thurston Moore, and of course, half-brother Julian Lennon.

What does one do with this kind of information? Nothing, hopefully. If you find a wormhole like this, you should move about very carefully and keep very quiet, lest you bestir the celebrities in their natural habitats. But like Lucy Pencey accidentally discovering a portal to Narnia, it’s kind of a kick to know there are such places — kind of like a big Wii Celebrity Avatar Plaza, full of famous faces.

The even weirder part is that you can actually view the friends of the friends of SL, and click even further to see their friends, which opens up even more “through the looking-glass” possibilities. Believe me, you can easily kill a few hours just playing Six Degrees of Sean Lennon.

My wife Therese found this purely by accident (I won’t say how, specifically, just as I wouldn’t want to publish the formula for sarin gas or plans to build an H-bomb). I’m sure her discovering this was perfectly innocent and well within the lackadaisical interests of killing time. I’d hate to think what motivated people might do with such wormhole secrets.

For some, having a bunch of celebrity friends is no biggie. I’m sure there are plenty of Manilans who jet-set enough to have dozens of celeb pals on their roster, and they’d probably like to keep it on the down-low. That’s probably wise. And that’s why Facebook has security settings to block out the online rubberneckers and paparazzi. But on the other hand, due to the very public nature of Facebook, your business quickly becomes everyone else’s business within your orbit of friends. The very listing of your friends — famous or otherwise — represents an open Rolodex for people who already know you — the amount of information available becomes exponential. And how many times have you heard about someone’s Facebook wall comments “betraying” their actual who/what/whereabouts, when everyone else thought they were at the office/alone/slaving over a hot deadline?

Facebook has generated a small backlash, it seems, probably because of its swift popularity. Burger King recently had a popular application posted on Facebook (“Whopper Sacrifice”) that enticed members to “drop” friends in order to get a free Whopper. The application was very successful, with thousands of people de-listing (we hope) non-close friends for a Whopper credit. But then Facebook canned the application, saying it wasn’t in the “spirit” of the company, which is about building friendships, not jettisoning them for a chunk of flame-broiled meat.

Of course, I was interested in Therese’s discoveries, though I confess it also felt borderline creepy, secretly perusing a celebrity’s page. There was SL’s profile update (“Excited about starting a new record label in Japan!”), his photos, even his relationship status (“In a relationship”). But really, even people with shaky morals know that looking through Sean Lennon’s online Rolodex is not quite right. Unless they’re friends of Sean Lennon. But, really, what a goldmine!

Of course, his former girlfriend, actress Bijou Phillips, was on there (so was Mackenzie Phillips, half-sister and troubled child star of One Day At A Time fame). Not to mention Samantha Ronson, noted GF of Lindsay Lohan. And Matt Johnson, Jeff Buckley’s drummer. Martha Wainwright, sister to Rufus Wainwright and daughter of Loudon Wainwright III, was also listed.

And the Big Daddy of them all: Keith Richards.

Yeah, Keith Richards. There’s a mug shot of him and everything. But when you try to “View (Keith’s) Friends,” you get this message: “Sorry, an error has occurred. We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.”

Of course, you’re not allowed to visit SL’s friends’ pages directly — you are required to send them an “Add as a friend?” query, at which point Keith or Julian or Thurston will probably say, “Who the **** are you?” and instantly delete your request. Wormholes only open so far, before you smack up against hard reality.

But not to worry. My wife is busily working on the problem now, looking for exciting new wormholes in the magical rabbit burrows of Facebook.