Why I’m not on facebook:
Here’s an article called "17 people who were fired for using Facebook".
Yes, some of the stories are just examples of internet stupidity…For example, people who posted racist remarks, or a group of flight attendants who shared work stories on Facebook, and revealed unsafe and unhygenic conditions on their flights, including the name of the airline they worked for. etc, …
But the scariest story is the first picture that shows up when you click on the link : A school teacher who was fired for posting a picture of herself—just smiling in a restaurant while on vacation, and holding a drink in each hand. No nudity, no raucous or improper behaviour, no signs of being drunk, no hint of anything illegal. Just a smiling 24 year old at a restaurant, holding a beer stein and a glass of wine. Yet she lost her job over it, because her school decided it was not appropriate behavior for the children to see.
That’s why I’m not on Facebook. It’s too easy to lose control. If I send a private email to a friend of me with a beer, it’s pretty likely that nobody will ever see it except my friend. If I post the same pic on facebook, it is much more public, and may pop up in searches or whatever.
Also…Facebook makes it hard to tell a white lie.
I recently was invited to the wedding of a distant cousin, which I didn’t want to attend. No problem; I simply told them that I would be on vacation overseas for 2 weeks, so I couldn’t attend… Which was almost true… except that I came home from vacation the day before the wedding, so I could have attended if I really wanted to. Now, if I had posted daily photos of my trip on Facebook, the family would have enjoyed seeing me at the Eiffel Tower and Buckingham Palace…but might also have seen when I ended the trip…and the result could have been very,very embarrassing.
Me, I likes my privacy, and having some control over my private life.
I think Grude has shared more on this forum than I have shared on facebook (and I have an active account) so, no, I’m not scared of facebook any more than any other internet information sharing.
Hey, I just lie about everything on my active account. (I also have a very boring page under my real name, mostly for employers and family. I check it every three months or so.)
Bwuh? You can solve that problem by, you know, not lying.
When you say no, it’s not actually required to provide a reason. You can just say no.
If you like the cousin enough to provide a reason, you can say that having just returned from a lengthy overseas vacation, you will need to play catch up and unpack at the time of the wedding. Unless your life is very different than the average person’s, this would, in fact, be true. I mean, it’s pretty common to need a couple days to recover from jet lag and ease yourself back into real life after having been absent from it for two weeks.
If the cousin is one to throw a fit over that explanation, see option one.
Or – and I’m just spitballing here – you could have not posted daily photos of your trip on Facebook, with the same result.
Having a Facebook account does not involve signing a contract in blood that requires you to constantly post photos and updates about everything you are doing whether you want to or not.
Nah nothing I say or share on my FB is anything I’d consider private. If it’s something I’d tell 200+ “Friends” it’s something I don’t mind strangers hearing about. I never do the location thing nor do I have personal information beyond my city/state.
I agree that that’s a dumb reason to fire her, but she’s not blameless here. Any teacher should know that there maybe some parent that would freak out like that, and you learn in your first class to be a teacher that schools will bend over backwards for these problematic parents. Why in the world did she post personal photos on her Facebook page she uses for her job?
This is the type of incredulity I expressed earlier. My children’s pastors at my church did something similar–showing pictures of themselves on the beach in skimpy swimwear–swimwear that is against the rules on any church trip. I think they are lucky they didn’t run into anyone who would have a problem with that.
Like I said, Facebook is a part of real life. If you wouldn’t share it with someone in real life, don’t share it with them using Facebook.
See I find that Facebook is what got me back in touch with those people. That’s why my family loves it. If you can pull it off without Facebook, more power to you.
I mean, during my homebound phase, I’d have had no friends at all if it weren’t for Facebook, since I also couldn’t stand for them to come in person.
Now that is a legitimate concern. But that’s why I use adblock, as does anyone I know who has asked me to fix their computers.
I’m not scared of Facebook per se; I use it but I use it more to keep up with friends/family I don’t get to see often. I like the ‘Facebook-enhanced conversation’, which is when you see someone you might not ordinarily know well or haven’t seen in a while, but you follow them on facebook and thus have many things to talk about (kids/school/friends/etc). I myself post very little on Facebook; its mostly to keep up with people I don’t see/talk to much.
I would say Facebook isn’t the issue here, its the compulsion people have to disclose every detail about their lives online. I’m no innocent here either, but I’m getting better. Part of it is the paranoia that, sure, it shouldn’t matter if people know I drive a 2008 Dodge Dart Lic.#FYGM069 but I never know how that might bite me in the ass sometime in the future.
I think the only thing scary about Facebook is that makes it easier to see just how many people are willing (eager!) to share all sorts of inane/dumb/hateful comments with even the most casual of acquaintances.
Yes, but for me that’s a key difference. I accept that depending on what I say I might be taken for an idiot or a jackass by an anonymous reader on a message board. I don’t want to take the chance that someone I know in real life might come to that conclusion by something I say. I’d rather say nothing at all, in which case why join Facebook at all?
This thread has helped me to question my discomfort with my brief experiment in using facebook and it just might be because I’ve always been one to conceal rather than* reveal *what I’m doing or thinking. It’s second nature to hold back, it takes a conscious effort to “share.”