This morning was the last straw.
I’ve come to the stunning conclusion that I really don’t want to know my friends THAT well.
The final straw was when as friend of mine posted some teabager video about how “Amurika” is a Christian nation and then some other dolt in the video breaks in to the fourth verse of “The Star Spangle Banner.” (Link)
Seriously, I liked these people better when I knew LESS about them.
I just “hide” the morons (I’m lookin’ at you, cousin M.) who post right-wing bullshit. Like-minded people, I don’t have a problem with – just signed a petition against lifting a ban on genetically engineered alfalfa linked to by a Doper pal.
I “hide” too–and maybe some people “hide” me, though I am not overly political on FB.
A month or so ago, I also spent a good half hour in the privacy section, setting up how much certain relatives and friends are going to see of what I post.
For awhile I had been disenchanted with FB but it’s better now. For me personally, it’s been much more good than bad.
Having said that, I can understand how some people might just want to bow out of the whole thing.
I sense something here. Only yesterday afternoon I saw a television advertisement for some online service I’d never heard of that looked like a facebook clone. It was a weird moment because the premise of the advertisement was that their service was the way to share and communicate and broaden your horizons, yet they were obviously spending big money to share and communicate and broaden their own horizons with a television advertisement. A depressing spectacle.
And now this.
Is the banality of facebook staring us in the face?
Facebook is pretty much what people make of it, just like the SDMB. I watched the video in the OP & was kinda meh about it UNTIL the “dolt” started singing. IMHO, that was almost a Paul Potts/Susan Boyle moment.
Btw, I now think the whole National Anthem should be sung, just so I can see the heads asplode during verse Four.
Learning about “friends” or friends on Facebook can be very hard. I sympathize with the OP.
Right now Caprese speaks for me. And I agree with FriarTed when he says it’s “pretty much what people make of it.” (May I please borrow that, FriarTed?)
Of course all this [del]could[/del] will change.
I think so. To me, that too is useful. Not sure why. Just a gut feeling.
Of course! Just put 50 cents in my PayPal account for everytime you do!
I have these family members appearing out of the woodwork and wanting to be my friend. I know they’re real people and real relatives, but they’re in another country and I’ve never met any of them and likely never will.
And it seems so rude to turn down being a friend to a family member, but I don’t really want them in my business.
No way, I love hearing the paranoid rantings of nutjobs! It keeps me entertained. The glurgy super-religious ones are just annoying, but I don’t hide them either.
Me, too. There’s a guy I know who constantly spouts the right-wing conservative screeds. He was one of those whose friend request I granted because his name was familiar from high school; after reading a few of his posts I looked him up in the yearbook and realized he was a whiney a–hole back then, too.
meh. I’m not FB friends with anyone unless I’d be happy to hang out with them in person. I have had long lost high school pals or relatives from afar try to friend me but I just ignore them.
For me it’s a great way to keep in touch with people I am close to but who live far away, or just connect with my real life friends in a way that’s more fun than email or the phone. I can’t even imagine friending someone I didn’t already know reeealy well. Why do people do that?
They can be fun to read, but what is really sad is when you just finish reading someone’s off the wall claim, and you are “wtf’ing” yourself at how stupid some people are, then see that 49 other people ‘like’ this post.
I deleted my Facebook account about a month ago, too. I was getting nothing out of it except aggravation (that whole “friending” thing is rife with pitfalls). I do like Twitter, though.
I did the same a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t worth the effort.
What annoyed me is that my account is not closed just suspended.
I never cared for the news feed (or whatever it’s called), but Facebook has helped me get in touch with relatives and others, so I’m “active” in that way. If someone is contacting you, you get a mail, so there’s no need to hang there for me. One thing I do like, is that you can use it as a simple “project place” for upcoming parties and such.
Yeah, that’s right. I think it said it would delete my account if not re-activated in two weeks, but I’m afraid to go back and look because they’ll re-activate if I go anywhere near Facebook. That kind of shit just riles me - when I want an account deleted, I want it DELETED.
Half the fun of facebook is finding out how folks you haven’t heard from in a long time are doing. It’s interesting to see what happened to them.
I friend just about everyone who wants to be friends because I never post anything controversial or overly personal on FB.
Does anyone know whether there are Facebook hacks involving spam? My nephew seems to be posting blurbs on family members’ walls about some website that sounds like a scam. Basically, “Click a few times and they send you money.”. Something called cashreport dot org. I’ve sent him a message asking whether he is actually sending this stuff, but no response yet.
I’m trying to figure if his friends list has been hacked and someone is posting glurge in his name. I certainly don’t like the idea of being scammed by my own nephew, but it’s not entirely out of character for him.
The former happened to me a while back - my friends started getting messages from me with just a web link in it, fortunately, the first few were astute enough to alert me and a change of password ended the problem.
Which is not to say that it isn’t your nephew…
Grim