I just couldn’t take it anymore. It had become an excercise in idiocy.
Between the “change your status to ‘this’ if Jesus is your lord and saviour” and the @#$%# cousins who lay in wait for me to sign on so they can tell me ONE MORE TIME that Obama wasn’t born in the US, I just had to quit.
Yes, I realize I could’ve just defriended the offenders, but I decided it was much more democratic and freeing to just dump the whole thing.
I really don’t need to know who ate a burrito for lunch that gave them the farts anyway.
This is why I only have 64 “friends”. I refuse to friend just anybody; I’ve turned down several extended family requests (along with ‘who the hell are you’ people). I only care about keeping up with a select few.
I have 99 friends and only one posts about Jesus is my Lord and Savior stuff. Same guy also posts state and/or country day which can be interesting. No Obama isn’t really American types.
One of my newer friends talks in txt speak and that’s a little annoying, especially as she posts frequently and is always complaining about something or other, but she is intelligible and she is the only one I have who went to BOTH middle and high school with me, so I’m not defriending her.
I am selective. I block Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc. The problem isn’t FB, it’s how you use it.
I had only 56 “friends” and 9 of those are first cousins. Some I would not have friended except for repeated requests and feeling pressure to do so because they are “family”. Yeah…before I only suspected, but now I know for sure that they are “family” of the racist, tea partying, tinfoil hat variety :rolleyes:
Seeing the people I grew up with again is the best and worst thing about Facebook for me. I grew up in a part of the southeast that makes Arizona feel radically liberal to me (I’m not joking), so I have to deal with a lot of birthers, Nobamas, rabid SB1070 supporters (even though they’ve never seen a Mexican, they’re pretty sure they have horns), Jesus freaks, and on and on and on. I really just try to say something funny or inspiring every once in awhile and keep my mouth shut the rest of the time. I can see myself getting sick of it all and deleting my account during the next election, though.
Sometimes you don’t know a person is like that until after you’ve friended them. That happened to me with one guy, so I just un-friended him. Simple.
It stinks that your family pressured you into accepting the requests, loshan. I’ve got a couple of my hubby’s family that have requested me recently - I’m just ignoring that for the time being. Not sure what I’ll say if asked about it, but I am sure that I won’t be friending them.
I have about 140 friends on my list, and I think a good 30+ of those are hidden, another 20 rarely post, and the rest are sane enough and are people I’m truly interested in. Most are people I rarely get to see IRL.
I figure the people who ‘friended’ me that I have hidden might actually care about my dribs and drabs of info (gawd knows why) even if I’m turned off by their stuff or just not that interested, so I haven’t de-friended them. Hiding works just fine, and no feelings hurt.
I also block all Farmville -type apps as fast as they appear, I can’t stand that stuff. I get sucked into a stupid quiz now and again, but I go back into my profile and delete it just as soon as I’m done.
The only two people I actually wanted to find and reconnect with aren’t even on FB. One found me through her sister’s FB account and we are now back in regular contact through email/phone. I have since learned from other sources that the second one became a hellfire and brimstone Southern Baptist preacher (never saw that coming), so…never mind.
Like several here, it’s probably who you know to begin with. The few that mention Jesus too much for my liking go to my church anyways, so it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into when I friended them. It’s not that much anyways.
Pretty much all the status posts I get on my wall are those that I want to read the status of - if you’ve proven that you continually have interesting statuses that I like, I continue reading your feed.
Remember this, everyone: the “Block” button is your friend. Got a radical right/left winger (yes, there’s undoubtedly Republican Dopers who don’t like screeds from the left either) that you don’t like reading the statuses of? You can either unfriend them, or press the “X” next to their particular offending post. It’ll say “Hide this post” and “Hide all from Moron”. Selecting the latter will keep Moron as your friend, but you won’t see anything they wrote. Got a post on your wall about someone’s Mafia Wars addiction? The “X” again will say, in addition to the above, it will add “Hide all from Mafia Wars”. Do this enough times, and you won’t have anything like that in your feed. (I must’ve done that a while ago, because looking at my feed just now to get the exact wording didn’t give me a single annoying game post to check, I’ve hid them all.)
I’ve been told that since I’m running for public office I definitely should not be on Facebook. I counter with the fact that people don’t know how to use it right, which is where most of the trouble stems from - users, not the technology.
My FB page is not even in my name. It is a fake that I use to only keep on eye on my teenage son and his antics on FB. I only have two friends, my son and a close personal friend. Other than those two no one knows about my FB page and that’s the way I like it.
Thanks for the welcome.