Ten Reasons You Haven't Spotted Me On Facebook
1. The indispensability of Facebook is greatly overblown. Off the top of my head, I know that my brother, sister-in-law, son, mother-in-law, father-in-law, next-door neighbor and work supervisor don't have accounts and none are likely to anytime soon. To reach any of these people, I either have to take a very short walk or pick up the phone. None of these people seem to be unduly suffering as a result.
2. My social networks fit into fairly distinct compartments. There are close family, not-so-close family, music friends, orienteering friends, work friends, college friends, grad school friends, faculty friends, neighbors. Mixing them all together would be completely incoherent. (If there are ways to create different access levels so that content is visible to some kinds of friends and not others, then this may not be an issue. But I have not heard any reference to this feature).
3. The thought of being contacted by someone who sat two seats over from me in geometry class in the 1980s holds no appeal whatsoever.
4. I am already easy to locate on the web. Having a unique name helps. Pleasantly, this has not resulted in my being contacted by anyone from my geometry class, and I think it's because of the slight extra effort required to do so.
5. Facebook fosters an annoying bit of innumeracy, namely: as the number of accounts approaches the size of the population, the entire population must therefore belong. Instead, it seems to me that most new accounts are for products, businesses, events, and multiple accounts maintained by the same person, perhaps as a way of dealing with #2 above.
6. My band did have a MySpace page, but having my content surrounded by blinking ads for weight-loss products was so depressing I soon stopped logging in. Maybe Facebook doesn't have any blinking ads, but how could it not?
7. I'm optimistic that eventually, never having been on Facebook will make me an object of envy.
8. A friend of mine was telling me about her Facebook experience - how she connected with an old college friend who broadcasts frequent and detailed updates of, among other things, everything she eats, but how it would be rude to "unfriend" her.
9. The Dear Prudence advice column (to cite but one example) is filled with stories of people who have decided to mess up their lives and their families' lives by deciding to try and reconnect with their prom dates.
10. My job entails fair amounts of data-crunching, database programming, writing scientific articles, and communicating with co-workers by email. All of these things involve typing while looking at a lit screen. When I get home, I seek out - even crave - activities that do not involving typing while looking at a lit screen.
2. My social networks fit into fairly distinct compartments. There are close family, not-so-close family, music friends, orienteering friends, work friends, college friends, grad school friends, faculty friends, neighbors. Mixing them all together would be completely incoherent. (If there are ways to create different access levels so that content is visible to some kinds of friends and not others, then this may not be an issue. But I have not heard any reference to this feature).
3. The thought of being contacted by someone who sat two seats over from me in geometry class in the 1980s holds no appeal whatsoever.
4. I am already easy to locate on the web. Having a unique name helps. Pleasantly, this has not resulted in my being contacted by anyone from my geometry class, and I think it's because of the slight extra effort required to do so.
5. Facebook fosters an annoying bit of innumeracy, namely: as the number of accounts approaches the size of the population, the entire population must therefore belong. Instead, it seems to me that most new accounts are for products, businesses, events, and multiple accounts maintained by the same person, perhaps as a way of dealing with #2 above.
6. My band did have a MySpace page, but having my content surrounded by blinking ads for weight-loss products was so depressing I soon stopped logging in. Maybe Facebook doesn't have any blinking ads, but how could it not?
7. I'm optimistic that eventually, never having been on Facebook will make me an object of envy.
8. A friend of mine was telling me about her Facebook experience - how she connected with an old college friend who broadcasts frequent and detailed updates of, among other things, everything she eats, but how it would be rude to "unfriend" her.
9. The Dear Prudence advice column (to cite but one example) is filled with stories of people who have decided to mess up their lives and their families' lives by deciding to try and reconnect with their prom dates.
10. My job entails fair amounts of data-crunching, database programming, writing scientific articles, and communicating with co-workers by email. All of these things involve typing while looking at a lit screen. When I get home, I seek out - even crave - activities that do not involving typing while looking at a lit screen.
Labels: quixotism, social networking, waiting for the snow to start falling
posted by frank b. at
5:41 AM
12 Comments:
anti facebook neo luddite blogger
This didn't make my original cut, but I'll add it now:
11. There are people who think Facebook is as culturally important as the wheel.
Obviously written by someone who has very little experience with Facebook.
Who knows what will happen with Facebook. I fell for Friendster, I fell for Myspace, and now I've fallen hard for FB. To answer a few of your concerns:
2) FB actually encourages you to create lists of friends (school, work, record-store clerks) and either currently allows you (or soon will) to target certain information to certain people.
3) Most of the people from that geometry class are as boring as ever but one of them isn't. That person shares one of your interests or supports the same hopeless cause as you, and that's kind of cool. Enemies, stalkers, and the like can be "blocked" and they will NEVER find you on FB.
6) FB has always had a cleaner appearance than MySpace, and--so far, at least--ads have not overwhelmed it.
8) Your friend merely needs to "hide" the offending person. That person is still a "friend" but you don't ever have to see any of the nonsense. They don't known they've been hidden.
9) I had a very nice dinner with my prom date and nobody ended up smashing a car window with a golf club.
All that being said, it certainly opens up a new realm of annoyances, and I do imagine a perfectly happy life can be led without it.
One of us. One of us. One of us. Oh, wait.
That should read brothers in the first point not brother.
FB can be a tremendous time dump. Like everything on the Web, you control how much time you waste. FB is like being in a big bar...you can be a voyeur...you can listen to and/or become part of a conversation. You can ignore people(tools exist in FB). It is just one more way to connect...if you want to connect.
I totally understand that you would rather stare @ something besides a screen...critters, humans or that real world that's out there.
The man, the legend - F.B.
"You can ignore people(tools exist in FB). It is just one more way to connect...if you want to connect."
F.B. has enabled so many of my connections in life. The tullycraftnation blog today.
brings back to mind, To the hip/ To the Zither/To the nothing rhymes with silver
I don't think my cone pictures would go over so well as "status updates" on facebook
Bernie, I would "like" your cone updates. Frank will never get that.
Teen-Beat #473 is a Facebook page, which, of course, does nothing to clarify this conversation.
how dare you go to your prom, jack. your nerd bona-fides were revoked long ago and this just proves that the nerd royalty was right to remove them. you were supposed to sit home on compuserve that night like the rest of us!
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