A lot happened today. A LOT. First off, Barack Obama friended me on Twitter. Yes, THE Barack Obama (or most likely, Barack Obama’s peeps).

Now why would would Barack Obama want to be my Twitter Bff4eva? Well…

1. I live in New York City. He needs me to rally my posse to take down Hillary (supposedly she also has a Twitter account now, but no updates yet. I find it interesting that her two friends are Barack Obama and John Edwards).

2. I’m also a young, female, Asian who represents 3 major demographics of voters he needs: the youth vote, women, and minorities.

3. He went to Columbia as an undergradaute. It’s obvious he wants to live vicariously through my Twitter and reminisce about his former college days via the few I have left (haha).

Check it out yo (click on photo for larger view):

This is the light, fluffy side of online politics that I witnessed today. The other side, the dark, messed up, “Is this really happening?” half came in the form of a Facebook message from none other than my former high school principal. Yes, my high school principal. Here’s what went down.

A few weeks back, I was bombarded with a slew of facebook invites to be part of this group, “___ is a PSYCHO. (insert principal’s name in space)” Maybe I was tired from the lack of sleep and wasn’t paying attention, maybe a little alien came through my window and convinced me to hit “Accept.” Maybe I just did what I always do and mass accepted all the invites I had that day. Either way, I joined and it came back to bite me in the ass.

At 3:32 PM EST, I paused from my Anthropology readings to look at an email notification in my Inbox. Apparantly I had a new message on facebook (click the box to read it)…

My principal was right in saying that she was always nice to me. She was. In all fairness to her, I see where she’s coming from. To see someone you respected and treated kindly, affiliated with a slanderous, immature Facebook group is a slap in the face. As for cruel, that’s a different story.

Like I said, I dont take pride in the facebook groups I join. This is evident based on the fact that I just looked at my groups and I saw,”I want baron davis and his sexy beard too” and “Blacks in the ivy league.” First off, who is Baron Davis? Second, I don’t support affirmative action. I would be more inclined to say I was cruel if I created the Facebook group myself, invited others to join, or even worse, agreed with the group’s message. None of that is the case here. As stated earlier, I joined without thinking and in retrospect, it was a bad idea.

Ironically, this all relates to the anthropology final that I took today. I was asked to discuss the reflexivity of virtual and real communities, and the relationship between online and offline relationships. I’m writing from a personal POV in this post, but there’s really a lot to think about here in terms of the bigger picture. Politicians are using Web 2.0 to campaign, administrators are using Facebook to seek out students, and I just had an intense fight with my boyfriend via gchat instead of yelling at him on the phone or in person. This is the world we live in. This is my life. The question is, how are we using technology to shape and substitute our interactions with others? When it comes to online politics and the politics of dating online, is there a winner or is everyone eventually going to lose out?

Ha, I am so the next Carrie Bradshaw. I am also the poster child for Insomniacs Anonymous.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!