When Facebook first swept the local blogosphere, I rushed to join the crowd and create an account. "Ooh, ooh, look, there's a shiny new thing on the internets, and I absolutely MUST be a part of it!"In the months since, my email has been deluged by "friend requests", "group invites", and similar things of admittedly minute importance like "so-and-so has written a message on your wall" or "a caption was added to a photo".
Every single time, I'm forced to login to Facebook immediately to address whatever pressing need is at hand. Facebook apparently thinks it's equally as important as my online banking account, which makes perfect sense. I mean, it's just as critical to protect my list of five favorite movies or secure my uploaded photos as it is all my money and personal identity information. How silly of me.
Somebody just sent me a "friend request", what should I do? Quick, I gotta login and see who it is! Oh, it's somebody I don't know. Not in the least. But I don't want to be rude and give this person the brush off. What if they're a total psycho looking for reasons to find new victims for their serial killing spree? I don't want to be the asshole who triggers a wave of violence through my thoughtless actions! I better "accept" the request.
Great. Now I've got a "friend's list" full of psycho killers! Just what I frickin' needed!
OK, that might be a little harsh. I just took a closer look at my friend's list, and can see there's a lot of people on it that I know from real life, not just strangers. I'm sure very few of them are psycho killers; and besides, if they're on my friends list they probably won't be incandescent with rage at being rejected and plot to murder me.
Trust me, I give my real friends plenty of valid reasons for that!
Anyway, I think I'm done with the whole Facebook thing. I've always considered it more of a waste of time than anything really useful. I've got email and cell phones and messages on my blogs (and others) and a million other ways to be "social". I simply don't need to "social network" on Facebook to remain that way.
(And don't even get me started on MySpace!)
8 comments:
I think I have facebook but haven't been to it lately. ONly a few of my blogging friends and my pen pals are on it.
I have had people add me who were friends of my friends on Myspace.
Should I tell you I joined Multiply? yep..I like multiply so far..the reason i have it is Yahoo is closing its 360 and so I just need one more place to blog!!! :)
Have a great weekend!
I tend to agree with you Bob, I am about ready to pull the plug over there. It does nothing for me. I
have a couple of good friends there, but I don't even communicate with them there..we'd email if we wanted to say something to one another!!
Hope all is well with you. Sorry about your friend running for Mayor...Have her try again..don't give up after the first loss. I know that from experience with hubby...he has won some and lost some...no big deal!! We all survive.
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving
Holiday and eat all you want. You
still are the handsome dude you always are...a few more pounds won't hurt!! :)
Best from Boston,
Maureen
kate, I haven't heard of "Multiply", but I don't think it matters much, since I've sworn off social networking sites altogether. I have to tell you, it feels liberating!
Maureen, thanks for the kind thoughts. Even though our mayoral candidate lost, we took charge of all the city boards, and finally the Democrats have a voice in this town after more than 20 years. The local press regards this upset of power as a "seismic shift".
That pretty much says it all, eh?
Wow, I didn't bother with Facebook after my son thought it was a bit creepy that I had a MySpace page (my only friend was my daughter, who thought it was cool) - which I immediately deleted, of course. I decided those places were for "social" stuff, and I'm pretty unsocial to begin with. So I don't blame you one bit.
Facebook and myspace are nothing but data mining tools designed to suck out as much personal info about you as they can. Info is then sold to advertisers, but then law enforcement uses it too...
Just say no to Facebook! A mode for making people socially lazy and alienated. Pick up the phone, or meet your true friends, like in the "old" days. It is much more rewarding.
I am sick of Facebook this Facebook that.
I am not even nor ever have been on it.
I am sick of MANY large companys only having information/contests/data on Facebook only.
Therefore for what its worth I try not to do business with them.
How about face to face stuff being more important than Facebook, how cool an idea is that!!
And, I work in the Information Tech field to boot!!
Wow Dave, you went way into the archives for this comment! That article was from 2007!
Actually, I'm on Facebook quite a bit now, because a lot of people in the film industry use it to connect. So I've come around a bit from my initial position!
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