Do all you hip young gunslingers use Facebook? I started using it about a year ago because it was the best way to keep in touch with some of my friends from school.
The very first time I wrote anything on it, I saw that one of my friends has posted “Why does Pandora think I should listen to gangsta rap?” and I commented “Because life ain’t nothing but bitches and money”. Little did I know that not only that friend but all of my Facebook friends, several of whom were my students, could see that comment.
I understand who can see what a little better now, but I still find it very frustrating to use. The people who comment on my friend’s posts often think I’m a Trump supporter when I write about the slow motion Deep State coup or refer to Frank Bruni as “Panchito”. It’s even worse than IRL in terms of people being able to understand sarcasm. So I think I may have to give up using it altogether, because I’d rather be completely isolated than to have to communicate with the kind of straightforward, pious sincerity that the totebagging massed understand.
Belafon
My theory on the internet is that all text must include a sarcasm tag of one sort or another. We write very informally on the internet, like we talk, but they can’t hear our inflections.
dr. bloor
Just stick to posting photos of your meals and you’ll be in good shape.
BGinCHI
Or, you could say what you want and just not give a shit.
If you’re yourself at work and that extends to FB comments, then I don’t see the prob.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Said it once, will say it again. If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back and kill Hitler, I would make sure Facebook and Twitter never got started.
XTPD
@Belafon: He wasn’t being sarcastic, really: Doug!’s joke is a reference to this lyric.
Doug!
@dr. bloor:
I get so sick of those.
Keith P.
The comments are one of the main reasons I quit Facebook. The idea is to share a bit about yourself with everyone you know, but it gets to the point where almost everything you post gets a snark back, often hyper-vulgar without regard to whomever else is able to read it (family, co-workers). I start to realize how few of my school friends have any sense of appropriateness, even at 35+ years old.
Doug!
@XTPD:
It’s not just that they don’t understand sarcasm, they don’t know song lyrics either.
sigaba
@Belafon: Unless we write under out real names and have an established ex Internetio reputation, our writings generally cannot be taken at face value. Which isn’t to say people lie, but opinions and representations lf our intent are always under question.
Even with out names, “commenting” has to be interpreted as artificial and performative– you’re not writing as yourself, but as a semi-fictional character you’re constantly creating, who shares your name.
Mom Says I'm Handsome
Ms Tilda’s Cap is right — Facebook and Twitter have done nothing but hasten the dumbification of the human species. “Idiocracy” looks more and more like a prescient documentary than satire; I for one would much rather be following President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho than Donald John Barron Miller Dillhole Trump. At least Camacho’s got what I crave!
ETA: Oh shit – http://flavorwire.com/537887/who-said-it-presidential-hopeful-donald-trump-or-idiocracy-president-camacho
Marmot
Man I cannot use FriendFace for those very reasons. And when I’ve tried to make a point, it can be wildly misinterpreted by mistake or motivated reasoning or the flitting attention span that it encourages.
Oh, and it’s shit for disseminating news.
SatanicPanic
Facebook is great for organizing. I honestly don’t think the resistance would be nearly as effective without it.
sigaba
@SatanicPanic: We used to have phone trees and political parties and stuff, those worked pretty well. I feel like Facebook increases the bodycount but the individual motive and affinity is much lower.
Facebook is for people that want to be involved in protests and mass collective action for progress while also avoiding icky labels like “politics” or having to do something compromising like supporting a political party.
Spanky
I’ve always hated that fucking song, and it’d better not be an earworm now.
Starfish
Sarcasm is now officially dead because you can’t know if you are talking to someone being sarcastic or a true believer. This has gotten much much worse lately. This blog has a historical context so we understand each other slightly here.
Facebook does some really weird things. For example, before the election at about 9pm, it kept popping up all sorts of really conservative things in my timeline and all sorts of really liberal things in my conservative friends’ timelines. It was like Facebook was trying to start fights before the election.
People also have really different ways of using things. Since I can’t count on others to talk to me and not annoy me, I just create Facebook posts and comment on them myself. My sister has started asking me, “Are you having a Facebook conversation with yourself again?”
Marmot
@SatanicPanic: Damn. That’s probably true. I should get back on, I guess.
James Comey is coming to Austin on March 13, for a SXSW event, and he needs an unwelcome.
SatanicPanic
@sigaba: I’d rather have an increased bodycount, since that’s measurable.
ETA- and all the Indivisible groups using FB to communicate suggest you’re not right about people being opposed to politics either. I’ll just get off your lawn now.
WereBear
@Marmot: Love The IT Crowd reference!
I have to use Facebook professionally so it is no fun at all.
glory b
Why do you call Frank Bruni “Panchito”?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: If you need help with that time machine, let me know. Though I enjoy a lot of twitter snark
@Spanky: I agree we will also work on a transmogrifier to bring John Blutarsky, and his eyebrows, to life, and send him to the studio where that song is being recorded.
Marmot
@WereBear: Thanks!
I actually miss having to use it professionally. I have nothing to say about meals, and all other topics there erode my humanity.
Ryan
You can group people. You can also aim your comments at specific groups, maybe people too. Better yet, don’t become friends on Facebook who you work with.
Brachiator
Got no use for FaceBook. I have an account because a couple of friends totally “live in FaceBook.” They have google mail, but never check it, claiming the spam filters don’t work.
If I don’t keep track of a person in the real world, I don’t want them popping up in FaceBook. Also, I tried tweaking the security and other settings, but could not get satisfactory results.
Gin & Tonic
FB started up when two of my kids were in college, one of them at an early-adopter institution (i.e. an Ivy.) Since I’ve always had an edu e-mail address I was technically entitled to join then – it was like 2004-05, maybe? My children forbade it. Time went on, FB opened up to everyone’s mom, and I still didn’t sign up, even though my kids no longer cared. My life is simpler without it.
Rand Careaga
The Book of Face has allowed me to reconnect with some relatives on the other coast with whom I’d largely lost touch, some for almost half a century, so there’s that. OTOH, the medium does not summon forth the better angels of my nature, and Trump supporters on my feed are apt not to grasp that I intend the phrase “inbred knuckle-dragging fuckwits wot oughter die screaming in a grease fire while bleeding out of every orifice in the last throes of a particularly nasty hemorrhagic fever” in the nicest and most constructive possible sense of those words, so it’s led to some misunderstandings and hard feelings.
WereBear
Facebook is like the Internet, only greatly simplified. Grandparents share grandchild photos, wingnuts make wingnut friends, lefties find lefty sites to share; trolls prowl without too much trouble.
I actually had to sit down my teen nephew and explain (several times) that his shared shenanigans are now out there, permanently, ready to haunt his future self. And he needs to realize that.
For some, it’s like having a diary that everyone in the world gets to see. Which I find very strange.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
I use it, but I try to limit my exposure. I’ve blocked/unfollowed/unfriended the obnoxious RWNJs. So my feed is mostly action items from Indivisible, anti-Trump memes and cat pictures :)
Brachiator
@Starfish:
True. Also, sarcasm died because very few people are actually witty. And so they fall back on snark, which is a very poor substitute.
pacem appellant
Facebook for me has always been a picture-sharing site, so we parents can ogle over our friends’ kids. I actually like doing that, and I find it a nice perk to a mostless useless platform. Recently, politics on FB–at least in my circles of friends–have been less taboo, no longer the purview of crazy uncles who repost everything from InfoWars. This to me is a good development. I often can’t communicate my anger in meatspace without becoming a frothing hippee. FB allows to me to have a conservation, often over a long period of time, that meatspace doesn’t allow due to timespace limitations.
Droppy
I signed up as an old person about 2 years ago because I was moving away from extended family and thought it would be a good way to keep in touch. Oy vey. I got all these friend requests from people I went to high school with forty years ago. And, I guess not too surprisingly, given where I grew up, they are largely right wing nut jobs of various stripes. And the crap people post – and the ads that are supposed to appeal to me. Bleh. So I posted very little, then stopped, then stopped even looking. I know the kidz don’t use it at all (mostly because old people like me use it) but whatever they are using can’t be any stupider.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WereBear: I didn’t bother to follow the link, but I gather the young Dem who is (I hope twitter (!) is right on this) making GA Republicans nervous dressed up as Han Solo for Halloween while in college, and Republicans tried to make an ad out of it. And I think it was pictures of Krystal Ball in a ‘risqué’ halloween costume that derailed, or helped derail, her run for office.
Starfish
I used it. Every time people in my hometown have joined a social network, party is over. My younger sister had to explain the every evolving security features. That is around when I quit because the security was too complicated, and I had a Farmville addiction that needed to be resolved.
I joined again a year or two ago, and it is just terrible for my emotional well-being. I really do not need to know what these people are thinking. I don’t need to know about the memes they are sharing. It is like if you had a psychic mind reading ability. It would suck. You would hate everyone. And that is about where I am with it.
Ric Drywall
@glory b: Panchito is what Dubya called Frank Bruni.
Another Scott
@Rand Careaga: rofl.
My step-mom is on FB to keep up with some of her nieces and nephews. She posts almost nothing herself, but she says she cringes when she reads a lot of the personal stuff they post. They seemingly don’t understand that “
rock and rollthe Internet never forgets”…Cheers,
Scott.
bemused
I’m still surprised that some kind of common sarcasm or snark tag hasn’t caught on.
schrodingers_cat
I have avoided FB so far. Have no desire to join. I don’t like Zuckie, and that preening Sheryl Sandberg either. I was quite happy when India gave Zuckie a wedgie by rejecting his stupid internet.org.
I am on baby FB though, WhatsApp. It is equally annoying, I don’t join groups, mainly use it to send text messages to friends/relatives outside the US. If people forward me stupid stuff (unsubstantiated rumor mongery stuff about scary Muslins for example or urban legends), I give them one warning and then just block them. Usually the warning is enough.
bemused
@Another Scott:
My husband comments on the gossip that flows from co-workers reading everyone’s fb pages in small town and shakes his head. Everyone knows what everyone is up to. He thinks fb is nuts and I don’t use it either. Funny how a co-worker gets busted for staying home sick but feels well enough to go to the slots spots or drinking with buddies or stayed home sick from staying out too late the night before.
NCSteve
Facebook is the concentrated essence of everything that’s wrong with the Internet. The Internet has been making smart people smarter, stupid people stupider, and crazy people crazier since it became a thing. Facebook removed the first part from the equation.
I have managed to live my life without a Facebook page all along and do not find myself in any way diminished or my life less rich for not having one. And while I’m always glad to run into someone I went to high school with when I go home for the holidays, I’m not finding my lack of contact with them on an ongoing basis to be a source of distress.
Doug!
@glory b:
Here’s why.
currants
Oh, FB sends all KINDS of info out you don’t know about. But I think you know most of that. About 8-9 years ago, I’d already exited FB but knew people who wanted to, and found a series of posts here that were helpful (for limiting exposure, limiting what’s distributed, who sees, etc.). The link goes to GroovyPost search with a list of FB tips. It’s probably been updated, and may not be the IT of this stuff, but it is helpful if only to be able to make an informed decision.
eldorado
nope. i kinda sorta partcipate on twitter with a pseudonym but i don’t really follow anyone i know in real life.
JWR
I use FB, but I’ve limited my list of “Friends” to people I actually know, plus a few others I’ve met online. At last check, I have 31 Friends, and aside from a few Bernie!Bros, who are STILL posting anti-HRC screeds, (I think, that they think, that Bernie! would’ve mopped the floor with that thing on Trump’s head had it not been for DWS), we all get along fine.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NCSteve: The Internet has been making smart people smarter, stupid people stupider, and crazy people crazier since it became a thing.
Nice
I could count on the fingers of one hand, maybe two, the number of friends/acquaintances and relatives I genuinely regret losing touch with, and I could conquer Eastasia with an army as large the number of acquaintances, ex-colleagues and relatives I don’t even want to say hello to in the street
Mike in NC
Only use FB to share vacation photos and the occasional cat pictures.
currants
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
YES! OMG, YES!
SatanicPanic
@NCSteve: You don’t use FB, but it’s all the bad things?
Man, I hate to even have to defend the thing because FB before the election was mostly just random junk and I personally used it mostly to make jokes and keep track of music events. But like I said, it’s become hugely useful and people who aren’t on it really are missing out. If you can keep up with local political action some other way, more power to you. But I wouldn’t do it the hard way just because my long-lost cousins might try to message me and I don’t want to talk to them.
Some Dude
I use Facebook to keep up with a few friends and folks from my military time. I’ve a couple of ‘Facebook Friends’ – people I know exclusively via Facebook, but we’ve never met in real life. There are a few folks I follow – Stonekettle Station and George Takei to name two. But I’ve also come adept at unfollowing and use other tools to keep my timeline relatively sane.
Wjs
Shit like nuance, sarcasm and snark do not
work on Facebook. It has to be direct and brutal because grandma only has .3 seconds to digest your hot take on pence using AOL as his email provider.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Once a man does snark, he can’t go back.
But on a more serious note, how does one discuss politics in a serious tone when half the people involved feel free to lie? Humor is the only way to force people to confront lies.
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
@Doug!: Could it be not so much that people don’t get you as you have an inclination to be kind of a dick sometimes? I mean just not answering a question is less rude than that.
Starfish
@SatanicPanic: The harm that it is doing is far more than the good. There are other tools for the things people are doing on Facebook.
People who don’t want to pay someone to make them a business webpage make a Facebook page. People who don’t want to send out any other type of event reminders send out Facebook reminders.
It is so convenient. Sure, people were creating mortgage ads and advertising them to those desirable white people. I don’t care about that, right?
different-church-lady
It’s evil. Fuck it.
dr. luba
@Some Dude: Exactly. Facebook is a tool. Learn its ways if you plan to use it. It can be extremely useful, it can be a time waster, it can drive you crazy…..it’s all up to how you use it.
VincentN
It sounds like a lot of the problems people here have with Facebook are the other people on Facebook. I don’t have a problem with that because I’m only following people I actually like and respect. Most of my friends usually don’t share political stuff but they have been doing so more lately since the election and I’m fine with it because they’re not rightwing nutjobs.
Also, Facebook is very useful for organizing events and parties. It’s just easier than sending out mass texts.
schrodingers_cat
@Starfish: My sane friend moved to Idaho, isolated herself, gets all her news from FB and now has become a certifiable crackpot.
Mathguy
FB is a great place to troll the RWNJs. I have a great deal of fun sometimes doing exactly that. Otherwise, everything negative said here about it is accurate.
SamR
I’m a lawyer. My rule for clients when it comes to social media is “don’t post it unless you’d be comfortable answering questions about the post in open court.”
david
@Ryan: I am hitting the like button on this comment.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim: especially here, we have a lot of in-jokes that probably can’t be googled: Green Balloons, tire rims and anthrax, naked mopping, Wilmer, sparrow on a curtain rod, Baud 2020
Butch
I have it only because it’s necessary to enable a specific app I find useful on the tablet. When I do actually look at Facebook itself it does nothing but annoy me.
Brachiator
@SamR:
I’m surprised that admonitions like this don’t happen more often.
different-church-lady
@dr. luba: People don’t use Facebook; Facebook uses people.
Gindy51
I only use FB for game friends. I unfollow every one and every thing. If I want to go check their stuff out, I will go to their pages and do so. I encourage everyone who friends me to unfollow me. Works very well for keeping sit off my timeline ad ads to a bare minimum.
Patricia Kayden
@Ryan: I’m not on FB but friending coworkers sounds like a sure way to get fired. I’d be terrified of coworkers seeing how I view controversial issues like BLM.
Yarrow
Seems like Facebook is useful for keeping up with family and friends’ big events, like who’s getting married or who had a baby. That kind of thing. Kind of fun if you’re interested in a specific subject. You can see photos and share tips right away.
Nicole
I’m extremely upset you haven’t sent me a friend request.
Omnes Omnibus
I have around 100 friends on facebook, most of whom are friends from my past or family. I have hidden the feeds from about half of them. I look at it once or twice a week. I post something even less often. I find it a useful way of casually keeping up with people from my past. That’s about it.
different-church-lady
@Yarrow: you know, the kinds of things people used to tell each other directly.
wonkie
I have close to two hundred FB friends mostly because of dog and animal rescue. Many are Republicans and Rump supporters. I have been using FB as a way to pierce the bubble of rightwing disinfromation and inform them about Republican policies. I never post any thing rude. I post articles about issues, especially issues that relate to nature or animals. I ahve succesfully covnerted several inot former Rpubican voters. FB is a very effective tool for communicating about political issues with peopel you don;t normally talk to. Just post the articles on issues and if someone comments in a rude or ignoratn way, just comment back politely and facutally. It does work as a vehicle for chaning people’s persepctives.
wonkie
Many of my FB friedns are rightwing not jobs but I just politley prove links to accurate nfo when they posts something and now they no longer post political stuff. I have lost only one rightwing friend. As for FB being full of junk–that’s the fault of people who post junk. SO post good stuff. I post Slate WapO Huffpo Vox Atlantic…got people interested in using twitter to follow the alts alt NPS, alt NASA and so on. FB is a great communication tool. I have a friend sho used to read Brietbart and watch like Alex jones. Now she posts mean stuff about Repubicans all the time and calls Foz Faux.
Capri
I joined Facebook to stalk my children. My rule is that I’m not a friend of anybody on Facebook that I wouldn’t want to spend dinner with in the real world.
I think folks irritation with FB is in direct proportion to their ability to ignore stuff. Just because FB suggests you friend half your high school class, you don’t need to responsd. When I see stupid or right wing stuff I ignore it.
I am FB friends with a co-worker (not just me, most of the office is friends with her) who regularly calls in sick, and then posts crap about her pyramid scheme “health wrap” business to Facebook and Instagram all day. Not a great way to stay employed.
Yarrow
@different-church-lady: Yep. But they don’t anymore. Things move on. At some point in the past no one had phones and then they got them and then the person without the phone was left out. I see it as similar with Facebook, at least the way it’s commonly used for people to stay in touch with family and friends.
John Revolta
Jeez, what a buncha grumps, cranks & misanthropists.
I love it here.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@wonkie:
I agree with this too – FB has acted like a sorting hat through this election cycle. I’ve discovered who supports Trump, who is racist, who the dumbasses are, and who is awesome. The Wilmer cult is still alive, and I have learned other things I can’t overlook going forward about some of the people I otherwise would have kinship with, and I’m glad my comments reveal my political positions to others who might steer clear of me now, which is fine with me. I guess like anything, FB is what you want to make of it. No one forces anyone to post or comment. Most of my FB friends aren’t on twitter, so I use FB to share information way before FB does. twitter is tomorrow’s news today, so I always am out in front of them with information.
different-church-lady
@Yarrow: my very point was that the don’t “stay in touch” anymore. They merely annouce things to the world. There’s no touch involved.
EthylEster
@Starfish wrote:
And DougJ’s previous spoofing here and other places is part of the reason “you can’t know if you are talking to someone being sarcastic or a true believer”. That was his shtick here about a decade ago.
I find his surprise at the idiocy of Facebook…strange. RTFM.
VincentN
@Yarrow:
I agree with this. I have a friend who refuses to get Facebook so everyone else has to take extra steps to invite him to stuff. It’s not a big deal but it is a little inconvenient doing a FB invite blast then sending him a separate text invite every time.
And telling all your Facebook friends you’re getting married or having a baby or whatever doesn’t mean you can’t also tell people in person. It just makes it more efficient to bring it up with the friends who actually care when you do see them.
Yeah, nobody needs to have Facebook. And nobody actually needs a dishwasher. But it does make some things easier.
Joyce H
I have to admit I live on Facebook. I don’t talk about anything I don’t want the whole world to know, and I’ve been friended by a bunch of high school classmates I don’t even remember. (It’s always interesting when one of them falls off the wagon and starts posting stuff about “MY HUSBAND SLEPT WITH MY SISTER!”)
There’s a community group for the development where I live and it’s very useful for lost and found pets and reports on road conditions. I also have a bunch of Facebook friends whose languages I don’t even speak, because I friended them way back in the Farmville days in order to get game presents; I kind of like their posts, gives my feed a cosmopolitan quality that’s hard to achieve when you live out in the country.
I always seem to get breaking news on Facebook first, so that’s interesting.
Personally, I mainly post about my dog and my workouts, with the occasional political rant or snark.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@VincentN:
Two people I know who aren’t on FB still circulate emails to a group of friends that contain information that had been in circulation on social media for weeks. Not the wingnut stuff in 30 point colored fonts, but just stuff they saw on the internet and feel like it’s important to share. I check my personal email about twice a week – everyone either messages me through FB or texts me.
different-church-lady
Facebook: where people with nothing of value to say go to say it.
jacy
I use Facebook constantly. But I prune it. I have a whole group of friends that I never would interact with otherwise — mostly writers. I’m “facebook friends” with some of the writers I’ve really admired since I was young. As with anything, you have to know what you want to get out of it, what you’ll put up with, and how you want to use it. For me, it’s invaluable for news — YES. But I know who I trust to be a good actor and know what the hell they’re talking about. Some of the people who I enjoy most in my life I’ve met through Facebook. But, like I said, I know what I want, what I’ll put up with, and how to cut down on the stupidity. (And I don’t argue with other people on their posts — if it annoys me enough, I just unfollow them and then I don’t have to see their shit anymore.)
VincentN
@different-church-lady:
I find this comment very strange. You seem to think there’s no interactivity when something is announced on FB. People can post responses to what you write just like they do here on BJ. Yeah, it’s not the same as inviting someone over for tea and sharing stories but nothing stops you from doing that as well.
jacy
@SatanicPanic:
To me, when someone rants about Facebook, it’s sort of like people who say, “I don’t even own a TV.” Like everything there is just crap. But there’s great TV, and there’s a lot of incredibly useful things about Facebook. It’s not for everybody, sure. I wouldn’t tell somebody they’re an idiot for avoiding it, but it makes my life a lot better — I meet wonderful, cool, interesting people who I’ve become very close to that I would never have met in real life, I reconnected with people from my past whom I really enjoy, who would have been kept out of my life due to time and geography. And I can touch base with people without social anxiety — I control when and how I speak with them. And I would say it’s invaluable for political outreach, organism, and activism — you just have to know how to use it.
The Moar You Know
I’m a reasonably heavy Failbook user. Don’t like it but it’s needed for various work and social obligations.
It’s also where, this last election cycle, that I found that every Dem friend I have (all my friends, more or less) bought the bullshit hook, line and sinker that Hillary was a lifelong habitual LIAR and that her email server was the greatest breach to national security ever known. And they all went and voted for her anyway, at least that’s what they say in public (I know damn well none of them voted for Trump, but a non-negligible number of them probably voted for Wilmer or Stein).
Given that, I should not have been surprised at the election results, but I was.
ETA: the one guy who didn’t buy the bullshit about Hillary is my buddy who was a right-wing, one step removed from Nazi party guy back in high school. He joined the Army and got schooled about reality pretty hard there, and he is now a staunch Dem with an amazing ability to sniff out bullshit. But he was the only one.
J R in WV
@bemused:
At Lawyers Guns and Money blog they have a [code] button that changes the font to ummmm, maybe Courier? monospaced looks like a typewriter rather than a computer font, for sarcasm. Here some of us use a / slash to indicate the end of something meant to be snark or sarcasm.
At LGM sometimes whole comments/posts are in the sarcasm font, which would be proper for some commenters here.
James Powell
@Droppy:
I had the exact same experience. It was very disconcerting to find out all those guys who back in high school wore ponytails and John Lennon glasses, quoted Dylan, and read Steal This Book had grown up to be tea party bigots.
Pogonip
@Joyce H: Re your community group: nextdoor.com has those too, they’re useful for lost & found pets, road closures, classifieds. I’m sure they sell my info just like Facebook would but I like to think, since they are much smaller, at least they don’t make as much money off me!
Captain C
@James Powell: Kind of like how David Horowitz went from being a far-left attention-seeking buffoon to a far-right attention-seeking buffoon.
Pogonip
@NCSteve: I have had people ask me “How do you live without Facebook?!?!” The same way I lived for 50 years before it was invented. However, if people like it and want to use it, it’s OK with me.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
It’s funny, the people I type at on FB are a lot like the people here. There’s the left-ish people fluent in snark AND sarcasm, and there’s the specialized experts helping people learn about their specialty.
It is what you make of it.
It probably helps that I found Social Fixer very early on. :D
Jim, Foolish Literalist
you forgot Poland, I mean borderline agoraphobic introverts
BruceFromOhio
Despise FB. While it clearly has its uses in creating virtual communities (foodies, knitting, cats) it drives immoveable barriers between people who otherwise may have found better ways to get along, or at the very least, politely tolerate eachother. Seen what it does to otherwise healthy, sane, happy, emotionally-balanced humans – transforms them into rampant trolls, flaming idiots, snarling whackos. Even the kind and wonderful MrsFromOhio has taken to screaming, shouting epithets at her computer over coffee in the morning. I gently reminded her that ‘maybe there is a better way to start the day that isn’t so stressful,’ and for my concern I got the “fuck you, you fuckity fuck” face she usually reserves for her siblings.
Praise Gaia and all that exists she hasn’t bothered with Twitter.
meander
I gave up on FB a few years ago, and even though I’m reasonably tech smart, I had a few glitches. Here’s the best one: I thought it would be a good idea to partition my local friends into a group so I could look at them separately. Call it “Metro”. So I set it up, and within minutes discovered that I had set up a public group called “Metro” (and was amazed the name wasn’t taken already), so started getting requests to join my public “Metro” group. I shut it down quickly.
Joyce H
@Pogonip:
We lived for years without a lot of things we now can’t imagine being without. A couple weeks ago, I ran some errands and midway through I realized I’d left my cellphone home on the charger. I continued my errands, but it felt so weird. I reminded myself that I lived for decades without the ability to make a phone call from anywhere at any time for any reason, but dang, I just didn’t feel safe!
A Ghost to Most
One more good reason that the Domesday Book is right out.
different-church-lady
@VincentN: pehaps we have different views of what “interactivity” consists of. While comments on the internet are a kind of virtual interaction, I would suggest such is a poor “junk” substitute for actually seeing and talking to your friends and relatives in a one-on-one fashion.
Having 250 people know a fact of my biography would never satisfy me the way even 10 minutes spent talking to a dear friend would.
different-church-lady
@Pogonip:
“Well.” That would be my answer.
eemom
Late to the par-tay as usual, but will chime in with 2 observations:
(1) SO fucking sick of FB-bashers. Great, don’t use the thing if you don’t like it, but for the love of fuck, STFU about it. Nobody gives a shit.
(2) Love that song, one of many beautiful ballads the BeeGees did long before the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (which for the most part is also good). Brilliant, versatile band.
Grover Gardner
My wife banned me from Facebook after a similar incident. :-(
Cheap Jim
Well, no answer, so I’m gonna tentatively count that as a good thing.
newdealfarmgrrrlll
I love/hate Facebook. It is invaluable for someone like me, health/vision/finances often prevent me from getting out and about to socialize, so it’s like an always-open big coffee shop where I can schmooze with friends. I have my privacy set at strict levels, that helps.
I have three main groupings of friends, the first and largest group of folks is foul-mouthed snarky sarcastic lefties. Lots of good commentary and links to worthwhile articles and news items. *waves to several BJ commenters from back in the day*
The second group is friends from seminary. Heh, outing myself, I don’t often share that info because people might get the wrong idea. That group gave me much helpful advice and educational links when my family first started dealing with mom’s dementia.
The third group is family and localfriends, some of the family I have on restricted friendship which makes life easier for me. I’m friends with a lot of both adult daughters friends — that’s where I get my fix of cute kid pics.
I am very leery of friendships with coworkers, and just don’t go there.