Let's Talk...Facebook

I am on it to see what some folks are up to. I have unfollowed a lot of people and I use the "Facebook Purity" plugin to cut down on the chaff. Honestly, Facebook itself has worked the hardest to make itself useless to me; by increasing the amount of garbage it decides to share, doing so out of order, and throwing a bunch of other trash in the mix, they've taught me to give it little more than a glance and not think about it too much.

I never post anything of any consequence on there, just goofy shit. Nor do I join in when others do. I'd chop down my follow list even more, but I really don't care that much.

Jexik, does that I heart pen15 group still exist? A friend of mine was asking.

Black Barney wrote: Jexik, does that I heart pen15 group still exist? A friend of mine was asking.

Mike French <3 teh c0ck

i'm generally in the hater camp. I use face book since it is how much of my social life is arranged. I use its message, events and posting systems etc. But most of the people I am friended with basically use it to broadcast their superior intellect and moralist views across internets, yawn.

Black Barney wrote: ...ah wait, I think I do fall into that stat in the end. I was showing our girl a game on my ex's iPad when this FB message came in from her sister. Basically saying that her and our girl would be much happier and better off if I was dead. So I asked my ex about it and it led to a conversation that had her asking for a separation.

fock that FB noise. Ugh, I hate reliving these moments.

That brought instant tears.

DukeofChutney wrote: But most of the people I am friended with basically use it to broadcast their superior intellect and moralist views across internets, yawn.

Yeah, I get a lot of that as well. Working in the University setting the past decade I have a lot of co-workers (or ex-coworkers) who seem to be sure to proclaim their view on every daily issue and pat each other on the back about how righteous they are. Thing is there's a large circle of these people still in my current field. Some have moved into the private sector locally, and I guess I feel if I were to start blocking some of these blowhards word will get around come potential future interview time. Really, though, I doubt anyone cares. Pretty egotistical to think that if I unfriend someone they're gonna get pissed, huh? I dunno, I'll probably just bounce outside this bubble for my next gig.

I don't agree with my family about much, so I ignore any non personal photo posts to keep the peace.

I also use to 'like' all sorts of bands, pro-wrestlers, promotions, etc so I could be notified when they'd come to town. This has backfired in a way. All these artists also spam my feed with articles, things they like, etc. as well.

Anyway, it was fun initially, 7-8 years ago, to catch up with everyone I hadn't seen in decades (military brats). That honeymoon is over though in a lot of ways. Most of the people I'm closest to now don't even FB, and besides a small handful, the people on FB I care about most hardly post.

I guess I don't want to commit the energy to go through and add a bunch of categories, filters, sorting, etc. I'd like to just nuke stuff.

If I could do it all over again, I think I'd only have like 50-75 people on the list. If not less. I like that dummy account idea.

Like Metalface, I seem to use it more for BloodBowl and Dreadball communities than anything else...

I'm not overly fond of Facebook, but it's one of the few ways I can keep up with friends and acquaitances from abroad. It's also one of the few ways to follow certain group activies and it's less personal than Whatsapp so it comes handy for a lot of minor stuff too.

When it comes to annoying stuff, the only issue are political retweets and the like which are always ten times more extreme and dumb than the actual opinions held by those who retweet them. So far I've been blocking those pages but there's a lot of them and I don't want to block any "reposts" altogether because there's some good stuff coming ocasionally from non-dumb pages.

I wish I could get in touch with people without having a corporation violate basic privacy rights, though.

I use it to keep in touch with everyone, but very rarely post my own status. I comment a little bit more often.

I enjoy nearly all the posts so long as they're interesting. The annoying ones serve to remind you no need to re-acquaintance with those people. And thanks to a game back then, I got lots of foreign friends from all over the world, and they often share things I don't know.

I use it to keep in touch with family and friends, most of who live on the other side of the world. And I'm pretty non-plussed if I seem cool or not on it (I'm pretty sure i'm not), I only have accepted 69 friend requests and I have those graded differently (so I choose to see and show only to some) and some I probably hardly ever look at. But I am a gregarious person so I do enjoy using it with the people I do have on my friends list - hey, how would I have seen all the absolutely terrible interesting music Pete, JonJacob and Doc posted over the last week (and have them be amazed by mine)

I dropped FB a few years ago for two primary reasons:

(1) Expectations
"Did you see what so-an-so posted?" "You should update your profile picture." "You didn't reply to my message."
Guess what? It's a website that I have to go out of my way to visit, and when I do visit it's actually kind of demanding. People seem to demand my interest when they post things or expect me to be interested in discussing what they posted with them later. I don't care about any of that. I was spending more time on FB doing what I called "social maintenance" than actually interacting with anyone in any meaningful way. But people expect a certain level of maintenance. It's soul-sucking overexposure that I don't need.

(2) Events (super-anecdotal)
This is a big pet peeve of mine. When I was in high school my classmates and I started getting crappy Star-Tac cell phones and it was amazing. The people that had phones would coordinate a party; people without phones would get the news via word-of-mouth in parking lots, and eventually you had a lot of people all in one place looking for a good time.
That died almost immediately when FB hit the scene. Now nothing was impromtpu anymore. People wouldn't commit to an event on FB until they had evaluated what other people or social circles had already committed, and it was literally the death of fun social experiences in our town. Suddenly the only people hanging out doing anything fun on a weekend were the people who couldn't stand not to be involved in every possible social event, while the people I actually wanted to hang out with wouldn't show because they had canvased the scene on FB and decided against it already.
I thought this would die out as we reached adulthood, but instead people drifted away from using FB for events but never drifted back to using the phone either. My younger siblings' late teens and early 20s was nothing like mine, to the extent that they often don't have anything to talk about when they reunite with old friends in person, never had unorganized social events, and generally aren't very interesting.
It's made me pay more attention to how people use twitter and FB and such, and my long-running observation is that those tools actually decrease face-to-face social interaction and the ability of people to make it happen.

I use Facebook purely to maintain my influx of geeky interests. As such I use my pseudonym, only my immediate family (no cousins, aunts etc.) Fatties and those with like interests.

I post a few personal pics but mainly boardgame related items. I like it fine for keeping in contact with others and that's really about it.

I often post whatever game I'm playing with the family and crosspost to Instagram and Twitter if it looks cool in a commodity photo kind of way because fuck you, that's what I do. These social media outlets are for broadcasting every micro-delectation of objects, foods, cultural niches, and political ironies occurring in my personal life, whether or not it's relevant to anything you're doing. Embrace it, or you know, filter me out. Also, lots of pictures of pit bulls. But hey, I only have like 80 friends so it's not like I'm entirely indiscriminate, right? On that note, FB is one of the few places where authors will actually friend you, I think mostly because they don't know any better. So now I'm "friends" with Dennis Cooper, Ron Silliman, Dodie Bellamy, Kevin Killian, Pat Cadigan, and Samuel R Delany. What was I saying about being discriminating?

Facebook is also fun for posting vignettes that don't fit in a tweet. Such as:

"As I awakened, moist with a remnant fever, I pondered the word "moist" and Deb's hatred of it. I'm not sure I ever want to ponder it again.

Moist. Awful word in all respects.

The way it's spoken indicates its quality almost onomatopoetically. Its sound starting with a soft "m" and slithering into two vowels, indeterminate, unguent, yet ending in a way that makes one spit the word out as if the palate needed to be cleansed of the word's passage.

Worse is the state of being moist: that one critical degree off of homeostasis that makes an object ooze of itself into its surroundings, seeping toward its negative space with grotesque, decomposing steadiness. The passive sense of moist is equally unnerving, the air so suffused with inescapable liquid that inhabitant objects are infiltrated with it, sweating helplessly, their damp surfaces to become playgrounds for the oldest and grossest forms of life.

To my fevered self, the word moist means something has gone alien, an accrual of water in places where it doesn't belong, where the delineation between wet and dry, or the boundaries of an object, should be reestablished before stranger things happen.

In no case does this word belong anywhere near the description of a pastry."

Ok, let's see that dad-on-a-bike vid

I use it. My rule of thumb is that the instant you post something that is even slightly annoying for any reason, I will unfollow you. If you live near me you might get the benefit of the doubt a few times. Same if you're related to me by blood or marriage.

Facebook Purity is a must.

I actually find Facebook messenger more useful than Facebook these days.