Parts of Facebook are really cool. It’s great that I can see pictures of extended family that I don’t see often. It’s great to be able to organize events with a few mouse clicks. Cool that we can recognize each others birthdays. Where it falls short is in spreading right wing propaganda. I’ve reported many a post that was obviously false and/or inflammatory and/or hate speech and have never seen one post removed for my effort.
I have a real problem with it, personally. It’s possibly exacerbated by the ADHD and the fact that I am really emotionally sensitive. But people can do whatever they want. That’s a determination everybody has to make for themselves.
Interestingly, after I stopped wasting all my time on Facebook, I immediately moved on to wasting my time on other things. The transition was really seamless.
I have issues with the Dope, also. I spent 21 hours and 37 minutes posting here last week, I just pulled that statistic directly from RescueTime, no joke. I do believe this problem I have is most likely a function of ADHD, which compels the brain to identify as ‘‘urgent’’ the thing with the greatest emotional hook, not the thing with the greatest actual urgency. I have to cope with this by blocking it, and other websites, except during approved windows of time, but I even find ways to get around that. Yesterday when I blocked it I spent the entire blocked time composing a post offline in MS Word. The lengths to which I will go to get around my self-imposed blockages, I find very troubling. It makes me feel like a junkie looking for a fix.
So yes, I think perhaps some people are more susceptible to being neurologically affected by the internet than others.
I’m not sure how that relates to what I said? And I relate very much to what you describe. I was just clarifying dalej’s quip.
Hipsters?
Kids aren’t on Facebook. Not hipster kids; kids. To them Facebook is their grandparents’ app. My kids aren’t on Facebook and have no interest in it. Their friends aren’t on it. My nephews aren’t on it. They all find the idea of starting a Facebook account laughable. We’ve ever asked them to just so they can keep in touch with their relatives; they refuse. They use different social media platforms I have no interest in. It’s like asking them to listen to the Beach Boys; you might find the odd, one-in-300 15-year-old who decides she likes surf rock, but it ain’t gonna catch on.
Facebook will be as dead as dinosaur shit in twenty years. I hope Sean saved his money.
Well, you’ve reached the halfway mark.
Unsurprisingly, xkcd has analyzed this scenario: Facebook of the Dead.
It’s interesting how the conventional wisdom about their user demographics has changed in just the 4 years since that was written. The good news about the www is that it evolves quickly. The bad news is that it evolves quickly.
This seems an appropriate thread for this reference.
It’s a ~3 minute (spoof) video of a woman who’s dating some guy who does not have an online presence. Ironically enough, it was shared (to my wife) via facebook.
I guess I was trying to say my attitude doesn’t come from the ‘‘more enlightened than thou’’ hipster perspective. It’s more of a ‘‘weaker than thou.’’