I’m a casual FB user and I hate that it has become such a default communication tool.
Usually I check facebook once or twice a month to see if anyone posted something funny. Sometimes I might go a couple of months without checking because I forget about sometimes.
Twice I’ve had friends* upset and call me asking me why I didn’t go to their birthday party or something. I’ll say, “What? You had a birthday party? Why didn’t you tell me I would have gone?” They responded with, “Dude, I posted it on FB two weeks ago.” I tell them the last time I checked FB was three weeks ago and then they huffily told me I should be checking FB more often.
So now I’m the asshole for not checking FB daily JUST in case they post an event. Fuck that. I told them if they wanted me to go and I never responded via FB they should have tried a different way to get a hold of me.
*These friends are not my good friends that I hang out with daily or weekly but ones I hang out with once a quarter or so. Which I guess is why they were upset because we hang out so little that every occasion is a big deal but still if I don’t respond via FB then try another way if you really want me there.
Too late, unless your initials are S.W. and you live in Tennessee. Would you be interested in imnotonfacebook.us, imnotonfacebook.info, imnotonfacebook.org…
I am surprised this topic is so sensitive. I signed up for a Facebook page once, so I could see my son’s page. The instant I signed up I had over 50 friend requests (maybe because I have a very, very common name?). In any case, I don’t want to try to maintain contact with any more people than I do now so I quickly logged off and never returned. Now I get email messages FB telling me people have new messages for me, which I never look at. I guess they all think I’m smug when I don’t answer.
Use it or don’t up to you. I don’t look at twitter very often and it doesn’t hurt me any. But it’s funny to hear some people who spend hours on the Dope complain it would take up too much off their time.
After being away for quite a while facebook allowed me to connect with a lot of people from my past. Generally a good experience. Some people I barely knew 20 years ago have become very close friends. Ymmv
It doesn’t make you weird or superior, it’s more that people make these kinds of threads and talk about how it’s a “waste of time, why don’t people have anything better to do??? I’ll NEVER get a facebook!” THAT, nobody cares about. When it’s unsolicited. If it comes up in conversation, fine. But when people deliberately bring it up and go on and on about how stupid Facebook is, and they don’t understand why people use it, well, that’s just a wee :rolleyes:.
Just for those that don’t see the point, here are some reasons it’s great for me:
I have very close friends and family that live on several different continents. 2 very good friends from Brazil just had their first babies, my friends in New Zealand just got married. Damned if I’m missing out on those pictures! Babies!
Beyond such essential information, sometimes it’s nice to know the simple, mundane stuff someone you care about is doing. Stuff they might not think is important enough to particularly email. My mum might say “planted tomatoes today”, and to me, that’s nice to hear; my friend might say: “just watched Barry Lyndon for the first time”, prompting a small discussion. It’s the everyday stuff you’d catch if you were geographically nearer, but people would never email.
FB groups for various projects etc have some use. Every play I do will have a group so we can post anything that comes up: dates & times, production stuff, general ideas, who’s bringing hummous next rehearsal. Could be done through email, but for some reason the format of FB is quite useful.
Right now, I’m at home writing my dissertation. It’s boring (the subject is interesting, but sitting here writing: blegh), but there are several friends right now doing the same thing. If I post “how do I reference what I said myself so I don’t plagiarise my own work” I will get an answer from 5 people in about 2 minutes + a whole load of commiseration. We can share encouragement & tips in an easy way, that allows anyone who wants to to join the conversation. It’ makes writing this shitty thing a little better.
I don’t have any of the problems that have been mentioned. Nobody can find me because (shh, don’t tell Mark) I don’t really use my real name. My settings are private: even if you do find me you won’t know anything about me. I don’t post things I don’t want the whole world incl. mum & employers to know. My friends aren’t idiots who think Obama is an islamic terrorist. My friends aren’t idiots who want to pretend we have a farm together or play other stupid games. I just get nice updates from about 400 interesting people I care about to some degree. I spend time on it only if I want to. That is: right now I’m on it everyday for procrastination. When my life is more interesting I won’t go on FB for weeks.
That’s about it, and out of those to me number 2 is probably the most important. There are people I love who are far away, but who I would not email everyday to ask what they had for breakfast. Facebook lets me get the mundane stuff of their lives, which I love because I love them. I can see how that’s not for everyone. But for anyone wondering what’s great about it, there you go!
Threads like this that always come up could save repetition if we could just do away with these memes and myths:
A person like the OP who says, “I’m not on Facebook,” is a snob or hipster or whatever who is trying to look down on those who use it. Not true. Many people like the OP probably just wonder why others assume that they must be on it.
Using Facebook forces you become a shameless exhibitionist, sharing every aspect of your personal life to the entire world. False. FB can by personalized to avoid this, and you really just have to use it carefully, not like a 13-year-old girl.
Facebook has become the only realistic way to communicate today. Wrong–just about anything you do on Facebook you can do in other ways. Certainly the business world doesn’t depend on it.
Facebook is the only easy way to keep track of people’s ever changing contact info.No—that’s only true if you are extremely lazy and everyone you know uses only Facebook. There’s all kinds of software that will easily do that outside of Facebook. Yes, FB is one very convenient way, but it has it’s limitations, in that people might just have a dummy email, and rarely check their page.
Having multiple accounts is a no-no. WRONG. I agree with gracer–there’s no reason why anyone should feel compunction at having different accounts for different purposes. Whenever you use FB, you are doing them a favor, and that’s all it comes down to.
I think this topic is “sensitive” only for people who obsessively use Facebook just about every free moment they have, so that when someone like the OP comes along, they view it as a personal attack.
#1 is exactly the ONLY reason I posed the question. But NOW I’m getting pissed at all the people who STILL think I’m a snob or whatever after 90+ posts discussing this. I stated multiple times it was only CURIOSITY that motivated me and I stand by that. Those who want to be offended by my thread title are free to be offended and they can bite me.
“You’re NOT on Facebook? Why not? It’s so great and wonderful and let’s you keep up with the virtual farms of that guy you dimly remember from college, your fourth cousin and your neighbour from when you were eight. You should sign up! Sign up! Sign up now!”
“I’m not on Facebook. I just care too much about my privacy to put that sort of information on the internet. I’m not such a shallow, vapid egotist that I need to share every moment of my life with the world, you know?”
This. I’m on Tumblr, Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest, Goodreads, Vimeo, Flickr and Last.fm and searching my real name (and or pictures of my actual face) will not lead you to any of them.
I’ve had to tell family members and friends that if they put my picture up on Facebook with my name attached to it I will make their lives a living hell, and I’ve proven it more than once. The fact that Facebook encourages people to take liberties with other people’s information (in addition to its arcane, fluid and tilted privacy and security policies) is the biggest reason why I do not and will not have an account. No, do not tag me in a photo that I didn’t post, no do not check me in to your location, no, do not publicly invite me to your shindig and expect me to publicly commit to being there, no do not post your glurge/sexist “funny” images/bullshit on my wall. Facebook has decimated the concept of consent in a lot of really ugly ways. (Yes, you can turn off photo tagging and location check-ins. You can’t turn off invitations, you can’t turn off Wall posts from “friends.”)
See, this is the other thing. A whole segment of my family no longer bothers to involve me in activities because they can’t invite me via Facebook (or text message because I do not allow incoming texts on my phone) and it would be just too damn much work to call me. A two minute phone call to say “hey, we’re going to Applebee’s by the mall on Thursday for Shelly’s birthday, we’re meeting at 7 if you want to join us” is too much effort.
It shows exactly how much I’m valued, and that’s actually perfectly fine by me. Eff you and your lazy, selfish selves very much. That’s that many more birthday/holiday gifts I don’t have to buy, and that many more people I can put on my list of “untrustworthy flakes” and recall that I need not put out any effort toward them, either. It makes my life much, much simpler.
I have a friend who similarly despises the very concept of Facebook, but he put up a dummy page with an obvious pseudonym solely so that people could invite him to events more easily. He has email notifications set up so he doesn’t even have to visit the site. I mean, that’s just one possible solution, though. Fuming in a stew of bitterness about how lazy and shitty your friends are is of course equally valid.
Alternatively, it shows that you can’t be bothered with the inconvenience of setting up an account that would email you so that you can see them because you don’t value them either. Sounds like a win-win combination to me. They are free of you and you are free of them.
