I found it amusing that the OP is ranting about FB – while posting on an internet message board. Just saying. It just came across as so over the top. Oh well.
I like FB because I’m able to keep in touch with my cousin who lives in Wisconsin. It’s cheaper and easier than the phone, and she posts pictures of her kids all the time. (Those kids are fucking awesome). She lets us know right away when she’s coming to visit.
And when her brother and his wife recently had their first child, he was able to post her picture from his blackberry about an hour or so after she was born.
I signed up for Facebook because I have a lot of family on their, and we can keep in touch day to day, when we’re not busy. (We’re all extremely close – my cousins and I were more like siblings growing up)
I also like FB for playing games.
Dude, no one’s forcing you to use Facebook. Just like no one’s forcing you to post here. And apparently, keeping in touch with family and friends who don’t live in the area is somehow stupid, but posting to total strangers on a message board is not? :dubious:
What do you talk about when you meet your friends in real life?
I’ve made several major moves in my adult life. So I’ve got friends spread out all across the country. I’d rather get the news from them in person, but that’s not going to happen, so it’s great getting updates so I don’t lose track of them completely. Whose kid just started kindergarten? Who got a new job? Who’s remodeling their house?
You ARE awre that the Youth (and I used that term loosely, as I am 35) are not actually not that foolish? They are well aware ANYONE can have a FB account. It’s like putting yourself in the Yellow Pages.
The idea is that if you liked or enjyed a business you can follow their happenings as if they were a person. Let me give you an example:
We went to surf camp in Costa Rca for our honeymoon. I’m “friends” with the camp. So periodically I see uploaded surfing pics, photos of the resident dogs/cats, news about how the instructors did in surfing competitons, and the occasional link to a humanitarian project they are inolved with.
The fact that they were on FB had nothing to do with selecting the camp in the first place. I used their website – and TripAdvisor – for that
The fact is, if you’re not interested in maintaining social relationships FB really has no use for you. However it would seem that a great many people DO in fact have people from their past and present they aren’t dead set on avoiding.
I set her up with FireFox and Ad Block Plus. I have no idea why I still hear that “uh oh” shit.
That’s bullshit. If you’re going to send out invitations, SEND OUT INVITATIONS! You presumably have everyone’s e-mail address. If you can’t be bothered to send out the invites, you are being a bad host. Not everyone is on Facebook, and even people who are on Facebook don’t share your addiction and check it all the time.
Your analogy is lame. The thing about telegraphs and e-mails is that everyone can get them. Same thing with telephones. If you take the trouble to write, call or send a telegraph, it will get through. But thinking that everyone is both on Facebook and is reading all your egotistical drivel is nuts.
Don’t know about the OP, but I’ve been on the Net since 1988 and have used every new technology, adopting those that are worthwhile. For instance, I really like Google Wave. Facebook is a poorly implemented way of doing something that I have no interest in doing.
I have a Facebook account, but I set all the options to maximum privacy. I have gone to considerable trouble to not be found, thank you very much. The only reason I have one is that I was forced to have one to read my wife’s posts because she sometimes insists on putting stuff there. My view is, if it’s a photo, put it on a photo site and send me a link. If it’s a web page, send me a link. But don’t ask me to crawl into the Roach Motel that is Facebook, the place where information goes to die.
Dude, we are being forced to use Facebook. You can’t fucking look at most Facebook pages unless you have a Faceboook account, and quite a few of them, you have to do this “friend” bullshit.
It’s just the Web, made worse. It’s the AOL-ization of the WWW.
I have had to explain to many people why they need to be on Facebook and I came in as an extreme skeptic. Don’t look at it as a page of random Twitters (now there is something I will not do). It is more like Google for your relationships and you can use it that way. You don’t have to play the free games or read what people had for dinner. You can use it to switch over to private chat or e-mail type conversations for people that you once knew. Don’t pay attention to the front page. Just contact the people that you want. The chances are excellent that there would not be a good way for you to do that as well without Facebook.
It isn’t Myspace. I have no idea what the appeal for that one was but Facebook is different and it is changing the world. A lot of people have a few degrees of separation with people they want some personal contact with. One of my best childhood friends invented much of the technology behind Avatar and is James Cameron’s prodigy in special effects. I don’t like Avatar much (don’t tell my friend) but Titanic is my favorite movie and I had a few questions about it left after several hundred viewings so I got him to ask and I got a response. If you know how to use Facebook well, you can navigate the people of the world extremely quickly.
On the surface, people say pfffftt, I already have a phone and e-mail address but it isn’t the same thing at all. Facebook tapped into some unifying force of human psychology that is incredibly rare and it isn’t just based on raw technology. Ignore it at your peril. Facebook isn’t a fad by any stretch. There is the reason the person that developed it is the world’s youngest billionaire.
And, quite obviously, her presence isn’t so valuable that anyone remembers to call her. We’d be happy to include her in a Facebook Event invite, and she knows that, but no, I’m not going out of my way to include her in a manner that takes more work than anyone else. If she insists on being a special snowflake, she just won’t be part of our blizzard.
This.is. scary.Shag, I do not know you, I do not care about your web-based credentials, or who you know.
But when anyone says that a privately-run, with who-knows-what-motivation site is NOW REQUIRED for membership in the human community, I call bullshit. Or, I hope to the god I don’t have, that it is bullshit.
If anyone knows me well enough to invite me someplace, they know me well enough to know I’m nocturnal, I do not answer the phone - I do, however pick up when possible, and return calls promptly. I really prefer email - I have an account for people I like, and another for those I am required to contact.
AND THEY DAMNED WELL KNOW II DON’T DO “SOCIAL NETWORKING” - an invite by phone or email is not that hard - especially with “address books” that email services thoughtfully provide to spammers
If you’re so anti-social, why are you such a big proponent of everyone going out and spending time together in person? I’d think you’d like Facebook better than anyone because it allows you to keep in touch with people with very minimal effort.
I’ll go on Facebook right now and see what it tells me.
My friend Rebecca posted picture of her visit to DC.
My friend Sanjiv thinks Rand Paul should go fuck himself.
My friend Nick is on a cross-country journey back to California, where he’s from. He just updated to note that he is in Idaho right now.
My friend Tina got new shoes.
My friend Adam thinks Texas is hot. (He just moved there.)
Nothing earth-shattering. But nothing particularly threatening, either. If you don’t want to use it, don’t. I sure as hell don’t care. But Tina and Rebecca are DC right now, and Sanjiv is in Chicago. Nick will be in California soon. Adam is in Texas. It’s impractical for me to visit them often, but look! I know what they’re up to. These are all people I actually know and like in real life. It’s nice to keep in touch.
I don’t get why someone who seems to have never used Facebook is so angry about it. Why do you even care?
You do realize that saying that you do not answer the phone and yet pick up when possible and return calls promptly is a logical contradiction right? Without saying anything about Facebook, at one point no one had phones, then there were operator assisted phones but long-distance calls were a rare and special event but you had to have people in place ready to answer at a pre-arranged time or just hope for the best. Then we got tape based answering machines “God I hate these things”. Widespread e-mail and cell phones caught on roughly in the same timeframe.
I hate to break it to you but you aren’t Amish, you are just running a generation behind on current social networking technology and there is nothing admirable or practical about that. You don’t have to do any of it but you are picking and choosing by preconceived ideas and that isn’t good. Rejecting new technology isn’t a bad thing as long as it is informed. I don’t like Twitter for example and people better have a very good reason for calling my cell phone but Facebook is just there for people to take or leave. There are valid privacy concerns but those aren’t exclusive to Facebook by any stretch and most of them can be avoided by not posting things you don’t want the whole world to be able to find.
This is what I was afraid would happen - “relationships” are now electronic blips - if you cannot be reached via a blip, then you don’t exist.
The bit of a social group at a bar each chatting with persons not present is exactly what I was expecting. I am now in a 'burb and see kids walking home (I’m guessing) from school together - while each is chatting on their phones. Maybe these are sibs and parents require them ot walk together. Doubt it though.
Let’s hang out together and then ignore each other (in favor of chatting with people whose friendship I value more than yours).
And someone actually used the expression
“manage relationships”
Please say I am not the only one who sees a problem with that expression? Please?
Well, I think Shagnasty’s exaggerating – no one has to have a FB. But I think it’s a good idea.
However, for those who choose not to, what’s it to you for those who don’t?
If you’re anti-social to the point that you’re not answering the phone well, I don’t think the rest of us could explain it so that you’ll ever understand.
And yes, I think you are in the minority when it comes to “manage relationships.” What is wrong with the phrase?
This is the second or third time in this thread you’ve picked out only a bad example from someone’s post, without ever acknowledging the good. I have a friend in the military whom I would dearly love to get to see in “real life”, but instead I (and his mom, and his brother and sister, and his wife) got to see pictures of him and play virtual scrabble with him and have conversations with him - while he was in Iraq. Instead of being afraid for him for months at a time, I knew that he was ok, that he was missing his wife, that he just won a game of ping pong, on a daily basis. Kind of amazing, right? And speaking of his wife - in “real life”, I’ve met her twice (they met and married in a far away land), but we connected instantly. And now that she’s back in that faraway land, where there’s a 17 hour time difference and it would be costly and difficult to keep in touch by phone or mail, we get to talk almost every day - on facebook!
If you really need facebook to be a scary evil boogeyman, fine. And I’ve had dinner with people who texted the whole time. Guess what? It was because they were assholes. Haven’t had dinner with them since. But that doesn’t mean that texting is evil, or cell phones are evil, or anything like that. It just means that assholes are assholes, whatever technology is around.
I need to say this? Fine, I’ll say it: FB. like email before it, and the telephone before it CAN be wonderful - there are millions of people who love people far distant, and, for those, like shut-ins, such technologies are wonderful.
Now, back to my point - the technology is being conflated with the function. I am asocial, and would never dream of sending a “Hi! Remember me?” to someone from 50 years ago. If others really want to maintain contact with simply everybody they have ever seen, fine (scary as hell, but fine).
This boils down to quality v quantity, and I fear the simplicity of the technology has created a generation for whom blips are conversations, and “relationships” have become things requiring “maintainance”.
There have been very few people in my life for whom I’ve cared enough to have kept in contact (growing old and out-living such people is a real down side). I would have NEVER thought of them as “relationships” to be “managed”.
Before anyone states the obvious - yes, there are people who get paid to maintain contacts, and, in many cases, fake a “friendship” which doesn’t exist. Yes, salespeople do fall in this cataegory, don’t they?
I’ll try to make it simple.
I don’t care enough for most people to want to keep track.
Desiring to keep track has nothing to do with the technology.
Had I wanted to keep in touch, I have mastered letter writing, telephoning (including international!), email, and personal travel.
I know HOW to, I do not care to DO.
Now do you understand?
“Asocial” does NOT = 'unable to master technology of being social".
and no, this is not a joke. I sincerely wish it were, but we do seem to have a generation which thinks people are things which manipulate electronic devices in short bursts with simply everybody.
We even have a thread about the acceptability of not being able to turn the damned things off long enough to get laid, for cryin’ out loud
You demonstrate exactly that it’s not REQUIRED. People can obviously get in touch with you. It’s just an extra step for those who’ve tried the “private company” communication tool and found it benign and very useful.
I was a naysayer myself. I signed up because my wife was stationed and deployed overseas. It was a good way to talk and share pictures and news. But I discovered the power of FB when I started reuniting with far flung people from the past. Want to ask the girlfriend in 7th grade why she dumped you? If the next time you chat is 30 years later, she’ll tell you, and you can let go of that demon.
It’s been great, though, talking to people from way back, seeing what became of them. I’ve built and improved upon friendships with people that I really never did back then. And I’ve even met new people!
As to security, if the hackers want to know what colleges I went to and what my favorite quotes are, they should just ask.
Wouldn’t that be rather an ideal world for someone who doesn’t care to socialize?
You don’t like facebook, we get it. And that’s okay. I just don’t get the venom, since facebook is hardly mandatory. Did facebook run over your puppy or something?
