People keep telling me one reason to join facebook but I still haven’t been able to figure out why I suddenly would want to connect to high school friends I have not seen in over 30 years.
it can’t make you, it only offers the option
Aren’t you curious how that goofball from geometry class turned out as an adult?
Well shit, if that don’t get the Luddites fired up, nothing will!
No Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumbler, Tinder, or smartphone here. I have a wifi tablet to control Sonos (I have three tablets, actually) and I build my own PCs, come of them fairly complex (watercooled, multiple video cards, expensive). I have 4 PCs in the house currently and a dandy home network w/NAS, so it’s not like I don’t know the technology is out there.
I will say the smartphone (iPhone) nav app I’ve seen work was pretty friggin sweet, and if I lived someplace with more than 3 stoplights, I’d have that.
It’s useful if you have friends you see on rare occasions.
I grew up to not have Facebook.
Regards,
Shodan
You are choosing not to participate in one of the most common modern forms of news and information gathering/sharing. I don’t care if you do or don’t. I guess it’s like someone in the 1950s saying they don’t use TV or someone not using the radio a little earlier. Someone in the 1980s saying they don’t have cable, watch tv news, read the papers, whatever.
As someone who is a little addicted to information and dependent on it for his livelihood I might even be a little envious of someone who is able to disconnect from all that. You also get to avoid a lot of marketing and other things many people depend on but most would rather do without and few find any sort of substantive value.
For me, the internet and now social media are welcome developments that have sort of “leveled the playing field” and allowed someone of my ability to eat.
In addition to social and political issues, FB has also proved useful to me in finding comment interest groups of all types. I’ve joined several groups devoted to different aspects of Southern California history. And the fact you want to talk to some of the other people in these groups, who generally live far away, is a motivation to use the chat and messenger tools.
Twitter, OTOH, I don’t really get. I have an account, but I’ve never really used it much.
Facebook has a allowed me to reconnect with people I haven’t seen in years including family. Also a good friend of mine is getting married and having a child with someone he met on Facebook.
Twitter has allowed me to interact with celebrities and people who I would otherwise never have any chance of talking to in any meaningful way. It is also an excellent way of getting breaking news. When something happens it will always show up there first (depending on who you follow of course).
Facebook is the SDMB with pictures and a like button.
Twitter is the SDMB with 140 characters.
Smartphones are computers that are quite small.
I made a basic Facebook page a few years ago and promptly abandoned it. I do not care about food pics and people’s kids I don’t know. I got used to being the one at family gatherings who had to be updated in person about what everyone was up to, and in fact I liked it! Actual conversation! Yay! When my mother chastised me I shrugged it off, “Well if you ever looked at Facebook, you would know all this!” Yeah Mama, whatevs…
Then I was in Phoenix, AZ a few weeks ago when Hurricane Matthew hit and all my family and friends at the Georgia coast were evacuating, and it turns out the best source of info was…Facebook. So, I am back on it and being more active now. There’s a ton of stuff I find completely obnoxious, but it took a natural disaster to get my butt in gear and keep up with those near and dear to me.
You take the good with the bad, and I am fine with it.
Serious question: what does “social media” get you that RSS doesn’t? RSS gives you the headlines of new sources that you trust/enjoy, whereas social media tells you what your grandmother is reading.
News ≠ Social; why do you need “the social” to get information?
“Old Dude With First Smartphone” here. I use mine for everything BUT a phone.
Everyone I know just texts, which I love. As I get more impatient with being interrupted, I like that I know I have a text and can check when I have a free hand and a free minute.
What I really like is having a computer in my pocket. It takes a lot of the stress out of travelling. Wandering San Francisco was even more fun, knowing full well I could GPS my way back if I got lost. And Google a bookstore, Foursquare a coffee joint to read at, and Yelp a good fish taco for lunch.
Then don’t block them. Unfollow them. They can see everything you post, you don’t see anything they do.
This is not how Facebook works. You should stop making assumptions about something you’re ignorant about.
You know, chappachula - your posts seemed oddly familiar, so I did a google search. You’ve been repeating the same false information and assumptions about Facebook for over a year, and have been corrected every single time. Maybe it’s time to accept that people’s experiences and knowledge on a subject you admit is “so creepy that [you] refuse to use [it]” may be a bit more informed.
That seems limiting. No way even as many as 1 in 4 American adults have FB pages, right (stat rectally acquired)? Even if you trim it down to, say, people 18-30 … how deep, really, is Facebook penetration? Especially if you kick out people with FB pages, but essentially never visit/update them?
If you limit it to your personal monkeysphere or something, OK. Or even to your rough age group, OK. But is Facebook THAT universal, really?
These illustrate some of my basic issues with the prospect of having a Facebook page – a lot of “meta” Facebook page administrative tasks themselves communicate personal things to other Facebook users. In short – it’s nowhere near private enough.
As mentioned above, his thoughts on how Facebook works are incorrect. You really don’t communicate much of anything to people you are friends with unless you want to.
Yes. Social media I can take or leave (although I do use Facebook a lot to organise my social life), but smartphones are just incredibly useful.
I always have a camera with me (and it will remember where I took photos, so I can find them by location and/or date, and automatically upload them to my home computer without me having to do anything).
I have a map and a web browser if I need to check an address or the name of a restaurant etc.
I have instant translation of reasonable quality.
I can log my bike rides, track my progress and compete against myself (and other people if I wish) to improve my times. And, if I choose, my wife can see where I am when I am out in the countryside so that if I have an accident she can send help.
I have all the music I have ever owned accessible as long as I have internet access (and favourites stored on the phone for when I haven’t).
I have games, videos and books for boring journeys, or I can watch live TV.
I can send messages to family and friends.
Hell, I can even use it as a telephone if I really have to.
Smartphones are great. Just don’t let them take over your life. Put them down when you are with friends and family, and talk to people.