The Madness That is Facebook; please mark as people's evidence #1

I haven’t seen how Facebook is useful yet, but am trying to figure out why others do. Here’s an unedited stream (except for removing one oft-repeated message, noted in my comments, which are all in square brackets. Oh, and I just realized that I drift into all caps when I start getting stabby). There will be a quiz at the end.

The Wall:
a) a relative I’ve never met: astrology forecasts
b) a cousin: making friends all over the place
c) FOAF 1: Something to do with virtual farming
b) … taking many polls
d) married with kids mom 1: daughter’s soccer team’s scores
e) married (to d) with kids: ditto: daughter’s soccer team’s scores
b) … cleaning is boring
e) FOAF 2: treatise on an economist’s idiocy
e) … please rate my treatise by voting
f) husband of a friend: Bedazzled score
c) … something to do with virtual scavenger hunt
g) married with kids mom 2: Something to do with virtual farming
g) … Something else to do with virtual farming
b) … astrology something or other
e) … some existential mental masturbation
h) friend (single female): something endorsing manly men
h) … Tesla Motors will be an investment opportunity
c) … something to do with easter eggs
c) … something else to do with easter eggs
c) … something else to do with virtual farming
c) … more of the same
g) … frickin’ easter egg status
b) … lonely because hubby’s just gone to Afghanistan
a) … more astrology
b) … exhausted
a) … please adopt this virtual fish
g) … more GODDAMN EASTER EGGS
a) … MORE GODDAMN ASTROLOGY
c) … GET OUT OF THAT DAMN VIRTUAL FARM
f) … preparing for big presentation
a) … astrology
i) total babe wife of a friend: link to cool NASA video
a) … astrology … astrology … astrology … not going to repeat this one any more
e) … strutting over perceived intellectual superiority
a) … passing on cutesy folksy sayings
a) … warning about evil random friend requests
a) … virtual baby seal something or other
a) … virtual aquarium something or other
a) … virtual humanitarian volunteer work [?]
a) … good news about the success of my virtual cafe
f) … yahoo … hit a big score on Bejeweled
e) … conservatives are the antichrist
e) … bankers are poopyheads [but phrased eloquently]
d) … blankity blank hubby (e) gave me his sore throat
e) … daughter’s soccer team’s scores
e) … daughter’s soccer team’s scores, with one additional detail
f) … ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND points in Bejeweled!
j) FOAF 3: Go Saints!
f) … just gave an on-line class on giving presentations [okay; the presentation he was preparing was to, apparently, help people overcome their fear of public speaking by taking this on-line class in which they do not in any way do anything in front of living people]
f) … quotes from some psalms
f) … more quotes from some psalms
k) friend of 31 years: BTW James Taylor concert
f) … quotes from the bible
k) … publicizing a volunteer group related to education funding
l) (d)'s father: saw Avatar in 2D. no, 3D. no, 2D. [misspelled ‘nauseated’]

The Quiz:
Which one is an ass?

(e) FOAF 2, but you could be forgiven if you chose (f)

Which one is bringing $0 in to support his three kids, with his wife working, and having rent paid by his wife’s parents?

(f) hubby of friend. Howzabout you get a job instead of playing Bejewelled? Oh, and your on-line class in public speaking may not actually prepare people for public speaking. Is there a reason you don’t give this class in front of people?

Which one is on permanent disability?

(a) relative. I’m saddened.

Which ones have way too much time on their hands?

a, b, c, f, g. And me, this Sunday morning.

Hey! I hit a button instead of the apostrophe and just learned that you can’t edit thread titles!

Another rant about Facebook? I can take or leave Facebook, but I’m more bewildered by the number of threads by people who are trying to figure it out. It’s a social network site. If you don’t care about the updates of the people you’ve added, it clearly isn’t for you. Pretty simple, really.

Don’t want to see their Farmville or Bejeweled scores? Block it. No more seeing that! Don’t want to see astrology? Block it. No more seeing that! Don’t care about their easter egg hunt? Block it! (Are you seeing a pattern here?)

To be honest, the rest of your complaints (besides the silly application updates) kind of make you seem like a grouch who doesn’t give a crap about the lives, opinions, or thoughts of their friends, family or other assorted people they’ve added. That’s fine if you don’t, but if this is indicative of your personality I’d say you’re definitely not going to be happy on Facebook.

I’m sorry; I didn’t think I was ranting. This is my first post about Facebook, which I noted by numbering it “#1.” I often struggle to figure out what it means to care about people, but it doesn’t seem to me that knowing how many virtual goats are on peoples’ virtual farms gives me any insight into how connected we all are as people. As I was writing it I was more thinking about the diversity of information I was receiving. On the one hand, there’s someone getting up on a soapbox and on the other hand, someone else is discussing easter eggs.

Other than my astrology-obsessed relative, I don’t believe I ‘complained’ about anything my first-order friends or my other relative said. However, I am deeply troubled by the evidence that a friend of mine is working herself to death while her husband spends time playing games and doing NVA volunteer work for his church.

IAC, I am in fact feeling grumpy today; thanks for pointing that out. It was laying low, just a hair below my awareness.

It’s worth noting that almost* all application run through facebook will post on your wall WITHOUT ASKING and without even letting you know. You don’t know until you go to your own wall and find out. You have to opt out of this, and then you often have to tell the damn program to shut up, you just want to play a game without annoying all your friends, TYVM. On top of that, facebook recently made some changes which cleared out all of these flags, so even if you thought you got it fixed, it may be happening again.

:mad:

*and I say almost because I’m not going hunting for the one app that doesn’t do this.

The signal-to-noise ratio on Facebook is pretty poor, and I don’t get how many people can spend so much time on that site.

But it definitely has its uses; I used to know lots of people who adamantly refused to sign up and most of these have been converted now, since realising that you don’t need to be a fb addict to use fb.

If I meet someone in a bar say, and we need to go our separate ways, it’s much quicker and casual to get a fb than a number (you just need a person’s full name). And you can get photos from your night out easily for instance.

(Some people fail to see the point of photos of a night out. But then, what’s the point of photographing yourself in front of a landmark?)

I was a Facebook skeptic to say the least until I joined it last summer. I don’t play the games or write about what I had for lunch but I have joined up with a whole bunch of people that I knew as much as 25 years ago. I live far, far away from where I grew up and it is great to hear from them.

I always switch it over to private communications if I want to talk to someone and it is a great thing. I have heard happy updates and some terrible ones as well along with mundane but interesting news. I invited a few people to make a phone call which they did and we have made hours long conversations. I was not a social butterfly in school but I have learned for a fact that some people really liked me and gave me genuine compliments even though I never would have known that otherwise.

A lot of it is unexpected. I grew up in a tiny town in Northwestern Louisiana. One of my childhood friends that everyone else picked on shamelessly had to move away because of a tragic situation to California in junior high. He went on to invent a lot of the technology to make CGI movies work including Avatar. I have the James Cameron interviews on the web to prove it and he is incredibly wealthy now. That made me very happy and is something like a nerd revenge story.

Another was a female that I always wanted in high school but she wouldn’t do anything about it. She called me and told me her boyfriend at the time was very controlling so she couldn’t. The telephone conversation got a little graphic on her end and she claims that she is coming to see me for her ‘dream vacation’ but we will have to see how that turns out if it ever happens.

Another is a guy that I knew a little but he writes to me most days and is hysterical. We have running jokes and he would be a good Doper in some forums. As a coincidence, he married someone that I always knew but lived 50 miles away and they didn’t meet until they were adults. It is just little things like that which make Facebook a valuable tool. I am sold on it now and it makes me happy which is the most important thing.

I don’t see what good the human voice is. People say dumb things all the time, so they should all just shut up. If only everyone was struck dumb, I wouldn’t have to listen to them.

Oh wait… I don’t !

The reason you haven’t seen how fb is useful is because you haven’t used it yet. Have you used it to look at wedding pictures? Plan a party? Let others know about a concert you’re interested in?

The reason you don’t care about Farmville updates is because you don’t play Farmville. If you were playing, like all your friends are, you’d see the point. IME, the people that don’t enjoy Facebook are the people that don’t enjoy socializing.

Three words…Burning goat porn.

Seriously, I can relate. I’ve been on river kayak/canoe paddles IN REAL LIFE where some folks spend hours talking about facebook/farmtown/fuckville virtual reality computer stuff to the point that I’ve had to paddle away from them to keep from hearing anymore about it.

Uggg…

You’ve got to realize that Facebook is still a commercial endeavor, and that the apps aren’t them being nice to you. They’re advertising. That’s why they want you to SPAM your friends. The app providers have to make money to afford to provide you with that experience.

Knowing this, I think it’s great that they went ahead and developed Facebook Lite, which gets rid of all the extras. Those of you complaining about the frivolity of Facebook might want to check it out.

Yes, the voices in my head are so much more amusing. :stuck_out_tongue:

Love Is: Facebook Purity greasemonkey extension script for Firefox. BLOCK EVERYTHING thank you.

Actually, I shouldn’t have used the word “quiz.” It was more along the lines of, “… and now would you be surprised to find out that …?” Obviously whether or not someone is an ass is an opinion, but I completely agree with all of FOAF 2’s opinions and still get pissed off whenever I talk with him. But by the time I’d gone through the list (the iPhone’s Facebook app only looks so far back in time), I was getting irritated with all the virtual farming and easter eggs.

No, my friend. Thank YOU.

What makes it better than Facebook Lite, which is official?

I think you are right, although I might add the caveat that we are the people who like to pick and choose our level of socializing.

Facebook combines two things which are abhorrent to me: pictures of me and other people knowing my business. I realize that I’m the one who is out of step with everyone else, so I don’t do any fussing about Facebook or the people who like it. Different strokes and all that. Folks ask me “are you on Facebook?” and I just say “no” politely. No diatribes here.

I didn’t choose to have a Fb account. A friend set it up for me and then handed it over. It took me a while to get the hang of it, and to block all the crap I wasn’t interested in, but I’ve come to value it.

It has helped me to get back in touch with some people I like, and it has helped me to organise some things that were worth organising. And, as people have pointed out, it’s a very good way of giving out your contact details without giving out your contact details, if you see what I mean.

I think Fb gives each user a lot of control. I don’t have to see the updates of anyone whose updates I don’t like, and I can keep in touch with people whose updates and messages are actually of interest, or fun. Now and again, it proves to be really useful - people bring things to my attention that I would probably not have heard about via any other channel.

I just wish it worked more reliably. There are so many times when it goes into Software Craptastic mode and pages don’t load, updates don’t stick etc.

They’re not Easter Eggs, they are Mystery Eggs from Farmville! :smiley:

First thing you need to do when you see application update you don’t care about is to hover your mouse cursor over the top right-hand side of the update and the word “Hide” will appear. Click it and you will be given the choice to hide that application from your feed, or the person entirely. You can still connect with the person, you just won’t see their updates. Sure you will have to do this for lots of different apps but once you click it, you don’t ever have to see it again. (Unless you want to.)

The reason I really like Facebook, is that I feel connected to the people I care about without actually having to interact with them. I’ve reconnected with people I haven’t heard from in 20 years. For that reason alone it’s worth it to me.

And I like Farmville.

The irony in that statement burns on multiple levels. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about it.

And Fuckville is way better.

It’s good for keeping in touch with geographically distant but otherwise close family - and an easy way to share photos with interested friends.