I don’t use facebook yet but I don’t have anything against it.
I don’t have any desire to reconnect with old friends so that part is out for me. I don’t have many current friends so I can keep up with them via email or phone. I suppose if I had a lot of friends then a facebook type site would be a good idea.
I wonder if some other site will get more popular, myspace was big but now it seems many people moved to facebook instead.
Just because YOU do not want to do something, does not mean the REST OF US should be the same way.
We get exactly what you’re saying – you don’t like Facebook, and it offends you to the point of uncontrollable rage.
Well, you could just not friend anyone from your past, just hide your profile so no one from your past can look you up.
This is smilar to thoughts I have had quite often.
As with popular music and fashion, tho, I imagine portions of older generations have long tended to decry technological advances adopted disproportionately by younger folk. Whether the modern pace of life and methods of communication are better or worse than yesterday’s, they most certainly are different, and I believe it is appropriate for individuals to ponder the personal and societal implications.
Straw man.
Fallacy of the excluded middle.
Really, you’ve got a serious hard-on for FB, here. Have you even listened to the people who are responding? NO ONE has mentioned posting every little bit of drivel that comes into their minds. NO ONE has mentioned preferring to spend time online than with people IRL. MANY people, myself included, only friend people on FB that they actually know and want to hear from, which is not “everybody they’ve ever met”.
Jeebus, you’ve created this Facebook Boogeyman that doesn’t exist, except for a small number of stupid teenagers. Here’s an idea, listen to how people are actually using FB, rather than the scary stories you hear from Oprah, Nancy Grace, Larry King, etc. Or, pat yourself on the back for believing the exaggerated BS they broadcast. Choice is yours, I guess.
I was only picking on yo/responding to the others, but if you want me to, sure.
Emailing invitations instead of Facebooking them? You get an email when you receive the Facebook invite. Out of 50 or so people that invitations may go out to, would most of these people have Facebook already? I’d assume you Facebook them if the majority of people on the list have Facebook. It also makes it interesting to collaborate on the afterglow, with the pictures and tagging who people are in the picture and what have you instead of sending them as an attachment to the list of people that got invites.
I don’t even know what analogy you’re referring to.
I also like Google Wave, but it’s not as adopted as Facebook is. Google Wave is probably the best way to handle sending out the invites to a social function that you mentioned earlier, but what good is it if people don’t use it?
It is kinda lame that you can’t even see Facebook pages if you’re not in Facebook already, and I’d assume that will change relatively soon.
Again, if it weren’t for the type of work I do, I wouldn’t be on Facebook right now, either. It doesn’t do anything for me. I suppose it’s nice to be privy to a few inane conversations that I wouldn’t have been on any other way, but do I need it? Nah.
So, on which links are your wife clicking?
I have a FB page and it doesn’t have any personal info on it nor an actual picture of me. I have the privacy settings as tight as it will allow me and only those who I have friended can see anything. I have only ever posted one thing and that is a video of Leonard Nemoy singing “Bilbo Baggins, the Greatest little hobbit of them all” because to not share that with the world would be a crime and I do not want to go to jail.
I check it about once a week just to see what other people who I am friendly with but don’t really talk to are up to.
I’ll say something about one of your points, regarding the “uh oh” ad. I’m guessing it’s a flash ad, and if you have installed Ad Block Plus and set it to block all Flash ads, then absolutely it should suppress it. If it doesn’t, that’s not Facebook’s fault.
Secondly, to correlate its noisemaking to its propensity to be a malware vector is irrational. Insidious malware doesn’t announce its existence, it relies on being undetected in order to do the most damage. I’ll agree with you that audible ads are obnoxious as all get-out, tho.
Also, using email announcements instead of Facebook invites is a bad comparison. The level of functionality simply isn’t comparable by a long shot.
If by “forced,” you mean “people I know are predominantly using it to communicate with me, so if I refuse to participate, then I’m the odd man out”, then I agree.
Speaking for myself, I’m not a huge fan of social networking and have many of the same complaints about how it can be annoying. But at the same time, if everyone else is using it, you’re only hurting yourself by refusing to use it. It’s your choice, but blame your friends, not FB.
It’s like blaming the other person for when your significant other decides to stray.
What exactly is up with this mindset that sees a new technology or process, and immediately thinks, “I do not prefer this. OH NO! Clearly it will soon become the only thing in the world, and I and those like me will be doomed for all eternity!” It’s the same mindset that causes people to freak the hell out about the existence of 3D movies (though that particular example will get you more ground here for being no less ridiculous), and I don’t understand it. It must have some sort of limitation that only triggers it in specific instances, else people who think this way would spend their daily lives having seizures over copies of Popular Mechanics. Has this been studied at all?
As for Facebook itself, don’t worry; when the future arrives, you’ll still be able to ignore people in peace. I’m a 26-year-old technology professional, and I do it all the time. Verbal communication isn’t going anywhere, either…your average Jack and Jill (or Aiden and Aimee, as the case may be) aren’t any dumber than they ever were; they’re just able to express their thoughts (or lack thereof) across a greater number of media.
Dunno. Why, anyone you know ever exhibit such a mindset?
My response to the majority of new technology is far closer to "Meh - not anything I need or am interested in, so I’m not interested in investing the time, money and effort to get involved."
Whereas so many early adopters impress me as acting all "Ooh, shiney!"
NO I WON’T USE THE FACEBOOK AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!!
This is the funniest thread I’ve seen in forever. You kids and your rock n roll and your interwebs. It’s all Al Gore’s fault.
I just checked my grandpa’s FB and it said:
“I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you’d say.”
I just don’t understand the anger from FB users to those who are saying that it doesn’t interest them. What’s the big deal?
I started a thread to find out what opinions were about Facebook. I found out that a few people use it and that they tend to use it rarely or for specific reasons, none of which apply to me. I decided that there was no good reason to give it a second look based on that feedback. Now I am being labeled as an hysterical Luddite in need of an intervention because of that choice.
If you need the software and it fills a need for you, great! Use it!
But recognize that there are a few billion people on the planet who could not care less about this technology and, believe it or not, are not missing anything by not using it.
The one other thing that I have to respond to is the poster who said that they would actively ostracize anyone of their acquaintance who has the nerve not to have an account. That is just sick.
I think the annoyance come in when people like the OP suggest or even outright declare that using Facebook is a sign of some kind of relationship-based pathology. For example the OP declared that people who use facebook subsitute it for in-person relationships, that the relationships people have through it are shallow, and that maintaining contact with a wide range of people is somehow a bad thing.
If someone says “eh not my thing” its no skin off my back.
Here’s the distrubing part, it seems that when we are spending time with certain “friends”, IRL or real time, it seems like at least half or a great majority of that time they seem to spend with us they are in the classic heads down, thumbs and fingers, gadget a go-go stance, texting or posting to facebook on their cellphone, ignoring us the whole time. It’s really annoying, and kind of ironic… but I guess it lets us know exactly where we stand in terms of importance-- or maybe it reflects our “boring quotient” in terms of social hierarchy.
This is exactly my point - people now enjoy using a keyboard to chat with a distant person more that they enjoy using their mouths to chat with a real peson.
To do so while “on a date” or other social enteraction is simply bizarre
One thing I don’t get is all the people who constantly bitch about facebook “friends” spamming them with religious or political shit they don’t want. I’ve heard any number of people talking about connecting with old friends or acquaintences via facebook, only to find out that they’ve become Born-Again Christian teabagger birthers who spam them with crap every day, but the then these same people (the recipents of the crap) alsways say they don’t want to be rude and de-friend anybody. Why the hell not? What’s wrong with just recocognizing that we’ve moved away from somebody in life? We’re not SUPPOSED to be able to reconnect with every single person we ever met. Most of them are boring assholes. I know I am.
Oh Dio, you’re not boring!
← that’s a funny
If your objection to the practice is “it’s bizarre” I’d avoid the rest of humanity. Bizarreness is our bread and butter. (Of course, I dislike the practice of taking a phonecall when you are engaged in a conversation. But what is there for me to do other than not partake of the behavior myself. Tactlessness on their part is no excuse for tactlessness on mine.)
And, as explained elsewhere in this thread, people who do that are called assholes. You make it sound like the second someone signs up for Facebook, they immediately substitute in-person contact for constant texting and tweeting or something.
On Monday, my friend Matt posted something on my FB wall. I replied, then he replied. Oh no, our friendship has been replaced by electronic blips! Well, except for when he and I had lunch together in person yesterday without texting anyone. Funny how people can do both and still be normal.