What's your status?

A man in the UK was jailed for life this week for murdering his wife because she changed her status on Facebook.
The jealous husband, convinced she was having an affair, became incensed when she changed her status to ‘single’ on the social networking site.
Somewhat harsh, but it makes you think. We gaily display our personal lives all over the web – and you never know who’s reading so perhaps we should all be a little more careful.
Personally speaking, I’ve got a bit of a problem with the whole ‘status’ listing on Facebook and MySpace. You can currently only select from married, single or ‘in a relationship’ – whatever that means out here in L.A. It’s far too black and white, when the reality is many shades of grey.
I had a conversation recently with a male friend on the subject. He’s young, hip and lives in Hollywood, but even he confessed to be a bit confused sometimes on the status subject.
In the UK for example, you are either going out with someone, or you’re not. In the U.S there seems to be a lot more variation on this theme. You can be ‘seeing’ someone and indeed lots of other people. You can also be dating non-exclusively – that’s dating a few different people, or exclusively – that’s just the one. This should not be confused with ‘going steady’ which is dating exclusively and pretty seriously.
In college, you can be ‘pinned’ to someone – that is, a girl wears a boy’s fraternity pin to show they are serious about each other. An L.A neighbour recently confessed she went to dinner in college halls wearing someone’s pin but over dinner, became so attracted to the boy at the opposite end of the table, that during the course of the meal, she slipped the pin off and into her pocket, a fact which didn’t go unnoticed by said new object of her affection. They’ve now been married 50 years.
But I digress. Earlier this year I congratulated another friend when I saw he had changed his MySpace status from ‘single’ to ‘in a relationship’. Ah yes, he told me, I changed it somewhat reluctantly as there was no ‘status blank’ option. OK you’ve got me there…..social networking status is a tricky business indeed.