I don’t think we’re talking about the same things. Here’s some specific examples (someone in my household does have an active Facebook life):
Someone upthread posted that if you unfriend someone, that person doesn’t get notified. Don’t know whether to believe that or not, because people do seem to find out quickly when they’ve gotten unfriended. And it often causes big real-life drama between people. Unfriending someone is also an active means of letting someone know you are upset with them … so … if they aren’t notified of being unfriended, how does that work?
“So-and-so hasn’t Liked any of my pictures in two weeks! Why are they mad at me?”
“So-and-so only Likes pictures of the kids/my husband/other people in my office … but if I’m in the picture, they won’t Like the pic! Why are they mad at me?”
And the reverse: “They’ve got me in a snit, so I’m not going to Like every stupid thing they post!”
Vaguebooking: Person A posts “I only have time for my REAL friends … everyone else can go to hell!!!”. Person A’s FB friend Person B – who hasn’t seen Person A in 10 years and lives three time zones away – asks themselves “Why is Person A mad at ME?!?”
Over-inference: “Joe hasn’t posted any pictures of he and Jane in three weeks … are they on the rocks? Are they splitting up?”
Accidental (?) posting of photos of events from which a FB friend was excluded (but really should’ve been invited if everyone was really on good, honest terms): “So … why wasn’t I invited? Why are they mad at me?”
And the closely-related accidental (?)posting of photos of events/outings that you, ideally, wanted to conceal from one or more FB friends: “She told me she was washing her hair and staying in tonight, but she just posted pics from the club! Why is she mad at me?”
…
The whole friending/unfriending and accepting/declining/ignoring friend requests seems to be a potential emotional minefield from the outside looking in. Want to know what someone REALLY thinks of you (maybe)? Read the tea leaves of the friending/unfriending stuff.
Or ever deeper into the rabbit hole … the Liking-vs-ignoring/withholding comment of someone’s posts and photos. Whether to Like or not Like seems to transmit much more personal emotional information than meets the eye.
I use Facebook on occasion and have run into none of these issues. I suspect that people will have experiences that coincide with experiences they have outside of Facebook. If their lives are full of drama, their Facebook use will be full of drama. If not, not.
If I were to get my own Facebook page, I’d ideally want very strict controls over who sees what. Say I have five FB friends: A, B, C, D, and E. I may want to restrict their content viewing like so:
A can see everything on my page
B can see everything except what E posts. Indeed, I want E’s presence to be wholly invisible to B.
C can see everything except what D and E post. Indeed, I want D and E’s presence to be wholly invisible to C.
I don’t want D to see or know about A and C.
I don’t want E to know about A, B, and C.
…
That kind of thing is either impossible to enforce in Facebook, or just WAY too much trouble. The gist of the issue seems to be that without engaging in some insanely complicated settings, most friends can pretty much see everything – and not only that, but friends of friends (of friends?) can see a lot, too. The person in my household with the FB account – that person follows the pages/posts of people who have unfriended them by checking out the FB pages of people who ARE still friends with the offending unfriending person.
It’s very simple to set all your posts to “friends only” rather than “friends of friends” which would alleviate the problem of a friend of a friend being able to watch your page. I certainly don’t live a dramatic enough life where I have to meticulously hide my friendships with a dozen people from my other dozen friends in very specific and myriad ways. That’s way too much trouble and I wouldn’t put up with it. Anyone who couldn’t “play nice” by ignoring posts by somebody they didn’t like, wouldn’t be adult enough to be a friend of mine. My Facebook feed also contains very little drama. Unfriending someone definitely sends no message. Someone noticing right away - which can only happen by watching their list and friends’ activity like a hawk - is simply ready and waiting for drama, and I would be glad to unfriend them. In short, Facebook is a very useful tool to keep up with far away friends and family. But if your “friends” and “family” are nutcases or drama queens, your Facebook will be just as bad.
Yeah, I like this. The OP is already using social media - it’s called the SDMB. It’s antiquated social media by the mayfly-like standards of modern technology, but it is social media all the same. Not really a big step to try others. I have a FB account and virtually never use it, but it was worth at least peeking at ( after much pestering by friends, I’ll grant ).
I tend to be a late adopter of most technologies, but I do eventually get there because there is some point to continuing to keep up with the world. I just do so at my own comfortably sedate pace ;).
At this point, if you don’t have a smartphone and have some exposure to social media, you’re basically that guy who disdains travel. “There’s nothing out there that I don’t already have at home.”
Sure, you can do just fine without those things, but, dude, you really are missing out on some awesome stuff. Whatever passion you have in life is shared by thousands if not millions of people who are EAGER to engage with you about it. You’ll meet some amazing people who are TOTALLY INTO the things you like. It’s pretty great.
I find it interesting that most of the people on my Facebook feed I know from other social media. I have very few real life people on my feed and, truth to tell, I rather like it that way.
Huh? There is a HUGE difference between the SDMB and Facebook.
Haven’t you noticed that here on the SDMB everybody carefully guards their privacy, and remains totally anonymous?
And that’s what I find so weird. Dopers who are so careful about their privacy when posting here, are so willing to expose themselves to the world on Facebook.
Here on the Dope, a person who posts some advice on, say, an insurance question, will only write “I work for a large insurance company whose name you would recognize, and I recommend…”. No Doper would dare to identify his actual employer.
The reason, of course, is that everything on the Dope is public, and will stay public forever, for the whole world to see on Google.
Now, Facebook is supposedly not-so-public. You are among friends and family.
Forever.
Supposedly.
But I am not so naive.
Suppose I post a cute but silly pic of my cat in bed with me sleeping. But I don’t want it to be seen by my clients at work.
Sure, I can send it to my list of “close friends only” on Facebook, and not to my list of co-workers.
But my friends may post a comment on someone else’s wall - someone I only vaguely know–saying “hey, did you see that funny picture on Chappachula’s page?–he looks as drunk as that time we went to Florida on spring break, and got arrested”.
And now I have an embarrassing story floating around the world, and searchable on Facebook.
(Yes, I know, the same thing could happen if I sent that pic in a private email, which somebody forwards. But that is much less likely to happen, and a forwarded email is not published on a public wall, and not easily searchable ).
