I don’t like FB. I don’t connect to the people I really care about on it. Most of my “friends” on FB are a strange assortment of people who I have warm feelings for from various points in my past, old university housemates, high school classmates, that sort of thing. It is pleasant to see snaps of their kids and whatnot, but increasingly my feed is filled with ads and either they are posting less or I am not seeing what they are posting.
But FB remains useful to me – not for them, not to stay in touch with my actual friends (most of whom aren’t even on FB) but for communicating in larger communities. For example, our neighbourhood has a FB group. Someone finds a dog wandering, they post it. Someone is looking to borrow a lawnmower, they post it. Someone is selling their ikea bookshelf, they post it. This function is extremely useful. I don’t know many of these folks personally at all, but through FB we can connect. And that is a good thing.
Likewise I belong to a nostalgia group that post pictures of the neighbourhood I grew up in, pictures from that time. And we all share our memories. And although, again, these aren’t my friends, it’s pretty nice to find folks that remember the same stores, the same crazy people, the same world that now only lives in our memories.
So I disagree that FB is at all important in maintaining actual friendships. But it is useful in creating new communities. Whether that benefit outweighs the considerable downsides is a question I’m still wrestling with (did I mention that I really don’t like FB?). But if the platform has a future, that I think is it.
That’s unfortunately not how real life works.
In “real life” before social media tools like Facebook, MySpace, etc existed, the best way to stay in touch with people from, say, high school, college, or far-flung family members was to call them, one by one, if you wanted to tell them something. Or perhaps send a group email, or write paper letters one-by-one. Not exactly efficient or helpful.
Facebook (and other social media tools) let people connect and communicate with large groups of people that you can curate as you wish, sending announcements, photos, videos, or well wishes.
It’s unfortunate that Facebook has become such a dumpster fire, because it’s literally the only way for many people to find, catch up with, and keep in touch with people they know all over the globe. I’m hoping a viable, popular alternative takes its place.
It was ever thus, wasn’t it? Pretty sure it was only a couple of years old when I signed up, and I hated it from the start, with its deceptive, opaque design that reeks of contempt for the users.
I was just remembering how much I looked forward to the mail carrier on a daily basis - my friends and I, being the nerdy artists we were, would try to out do each other with creative or bizarre mail and envelope art. These days it might be a text or email with an animated .gif - not as satisfying.
I used to hear this about cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and/or alcohol. Nowadays it’s about facebook and/or inability to disconnect from the Internet and totally engage with the palpable, somatic world.
I’ve always loathed its weirdly convoluted design and interface, which strangely hides popular features and commonly used areas, and have hated the way it’s increasingly skewed towards blasting “featured content” and the random things people have liked into your ‘timeline’ rather than actually display things people have posted in chronological order. That, combined with its horrendous security, doesn’t exactly endear FB to me. But as long as my entire extended family insists on using it as the single tool to keep in touch, I check it (usually when told to).
I reckon the perfect version of that gif would be static for thirty seconds, then like a third eyelid blink that briefly reveals satanic black eyeballs.
It was a dumpster fire from its point of origin as a “hot or not” site for an entitled and socially maladjusted Harvard student to complain about his female classmates.
Horse crap. Just look at those god damned ‘Children of the Corn’ eyes staring back at you and tell me you can’t quit. If you value relations with family and friends enough to make an emotional investment than it is a relationship worth ditching Facebook for. Neighborhood BBQ’s? Who the hell does those anymore? I wager most folk nowadays don’t even know their neighbors. The time spent on Facebook can be better used doing all the things mentioned in this article lamenting why they can’t leave Facebook. I opened a Facebook in 2009 and left in 2010 and never looked back. IT ws probably one of the best decisions in my life. Fuckbook, you can live without it.
You must be in your 20’s. It’s one of the reasons I’m glad I’m older. I see the future and I care not to live in it after a certain point. I regret having children in that they are having children and their future will be bleak.
Quitting* FB, Twitter, and deleting Instagram from my phone has improved the quality of my life. This is not to say that my experience will translate to everyone.
I’ve found that the “work” of keeping fairly meticulous contacts on my smartphone has enabled me to keep up with people that I truly care about in meaningful ways. Your mileage may vary.
I know that they already have lots of data on me. My bad.
