I have to post this on Facebook
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Quit a few months ago. The toxic cloud of other people’s digitally curated lives no longer clogs my brain.
Teeth still a lovely flyover-state yellow, though.
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I never wanted to join. Someone made an account for me =/ I’d leave it gladly but honestly it’s one of the primary ways I keep in touch with my Father. My social group is scattered around the globe, I’d sadly lose touch with a lot of people. If I could convince all of them to host their own websites and use alternate means of communications I’d be on board. It’s not going to happen.
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Exactly: I use it because I’m expected to use it, and because if I don’t check it regularly, I get calls and emails from family and friends asking why I haven’t responded to their FB posts quickly enough, or emails from my mom asking why I “liked” something, or friends wondering why I didn’t RSVP for their get-together that they’d put an open invite for on FB.
I completely understand its utility and appreciate it, but some people rely on it being an ubiquitous part of their aquainance’s lives that it starts feeling oppressive.
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Did your parents immediately connect the black square to Trump? Did they vote for him?
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They most definitely didn’t vote Trump; they first thought it was some sort of suicide note, I think, but when I said it was just a lame little protest, they had some other kind of worry about how that would look to the FB community, maybe? It was kind of bizarre, to be honest.
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Why does her blog invite you to share stories on Facebook?
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Immediately connecting a black square icon to suicide is a little bizarre.
I’m glad my parents are not on Facebook, because whenever I call home I got bombarded with whatever fake news they picked up from Fox News. Facebook would get them even more fake news, which would in turn get me more fake news, and more often.
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I quit Facebook before it was cool to quit Facebook.
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not to people who would see doing the same as social suicide.
Same here. I quit in 2005 because I forgot my password and couldn’t be arsed to reset it. Never. Looked. Back.
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I use it very infrequently from my home computer but I NEVER, EVER go anywhere near FB on my phone. Their creepy surveillance techniques have me relatively certain if I log in once on my phone I will be forever pwned with some sort of buried spyware cookies.
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I did this, though I can’t claim to be clever enough to have planned it. Slow adopter and I lost interest. I found when I crested 50 friends it became a source of unpleasantness so I trimmed it back and about 40 turned out to be the magic number. I check it 2-3 times a year, usually to thank everyone that’s wished me happy birthday after Facebook reminds them or if I get an email notification (that goes to an infrequently used account) about something or someone interesting. I’ve warned people who use it as a primary means of communication they have a better chance catching me by picking a street corner and waiting for me to pass by than getting a response through FB.
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This I find both bizarre and frustrating. I do some contracting and have sent out hiring emails to no response… send a message through my wife’s Facebook and bam they’re on it. Really frustrating for a non-facebook user. I like to keep all official correspondence in one easy to look organized place, and between Facebook and texting it’s become impossible. Luckily WhatsApp hasn’t caught on too much in the States or there would be yet another vector.
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I have both, and still waste all my time on the BBS!
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I get better content on BB, and better advice here on the bbs (and from more earnest people, more consistently) than a lot of places I probably imagine I’m not wasting my time.
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Facebook’s pretty fun sometimes. I’ve really enjoyed running my hedgehog’s page. I’ve met a number of people who are really cool though FB, and the groups can actually work really well for the right topics (birding, naturalism, bird/nature photography, hedgehogs) to the point that they’re better than any alternatives I’ve seen.
Politics is revolting there, and there’s dumb garbage to filter, but it’s been nice for keeping up with some very cool old friends from college I’d have lost otherwise who I’ve managed to visit in person when I’m on vacation and otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. It’s also handy when things go badly in various domains for finding local people who can help in one way or another.
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That’s an excellent question, and I have an answer for you: Since the fracas about fake news (i.e., flat-out lies made up to look like “news” articles) seemed to implicate the right more than the left, those on the right have been assiduously redefining the word “fake” to mean, not a lie, but anything that upsets them. So news analysis that is partisan, for instance, that doesn’t contain any demonstrable lies, but that they disagree with, they’re bleating about being “fake”. I heard this yesterday on Warren Olney’s superb show, “To the Point.” One of his guests is an academic Trump supporter, Francis “Frank” Buckley of George Mason University. He was complaining about the Washington Post’s highly partisan (in his view) coverage of the election, and said, “Talk about fake news!” I have also seen this redefinition of “fake” in comment streams (I know - why do I bother? But Slashdot is usually not so bad).
To sum up - simply redefine “fake”, and then you can find your “fake” news anywhere!
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Thank you for your well-thought out and articulate fake post. 
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‘The only thing I don’t like about having dumped facebook (it’s been 4 years for me) is that when I tell people I’m not on facebook, they look at me as if I told them I harvested the tears of baby seals…’
The reaction I get when I say I’m not on Facebook is very similar to the one I get when I tell a smoker I don’t smoke. Typically they get a sorrowful, whipped-dog look and say they’re going to quit (any day now), or that they ‘have to be’ on Facebook for business or family reasons, or to sustain their social life (pseudo-social)? No one has put me down, although I suppose they may hate my freedom in secret.
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