I’m more of an introvert. Odd for a teacher I think but in class or a conference, I’m in control, and in my element. I can present to hundreds, no problem. But in daily life I’m private and reserved. I grew up being told that you don’t share your business with others, and you don’t ask about theirs “Don’t ask me no questions, and I won’t tell you no lies,” as Skynyrd says). So when Twitter tells me to let the world know what I’ve been up to, it not only doesn’t resonate, it actively grates against my ingrained sensibilities.
So resisting Facebook has been rather easy. Which is probably bad, because every other fucking human on the planet is on Facebook.
I don’t do Facebook. I never understood the purpose of it. If I want to contact someone I contact them. I am not going to go looking for someone and I have no desire for people to go looking for me.
Now my wife uses it a lot to keep up with her relatives, who are spread around the world at the moment.
My wife is on facebook to keep up with relatives. She’s shut down her account multiple times because of the title of this thread, due to those same relatives. Sadly, it is how most of them keep in touch so she always comes back at some point.
It’s the only way I know what’s going on with my younger cousins. I can find out what they are doing, what they like, and how they’re doing all through FB, and it’s almost the only way to do that with the 20 something or younger crowd. Trying to get that information at a family event is like pulling teeth… assuming they’re even going to show-up at family events.
I have come to love Facebook once more. The overall process went something like:
2005: Boston U is one of the first schools enabled on FB. All profiles were students, so they included sections like “classes you’re in this semester” that pulled from course catalogs and created a private discussion board for each class/section. It was an amazing way to swap notes, set up study sessions, etc., and everyone there was basically a Bostonian college student. Awesome.
~2006-7: Somewhere in here FB opened to everyone, including parents, and started doing away with college-centric features. Less cool, but still really handy, and it did mean that my friends from back home in TN who hadn’t been able to sign up before cuz they weren’t in uni could.
~2008-9: Used FB fairly heavily to keep up with kids and other counselors from the gifted camp I taught at, which was nice. Shared tons of photos of our adventures.
~2010-15: A mix of family joining en masse and slowly losing touch w/ college and high school friends as I moved to North Carolina meant I used it less and less. I have no interest in my parents knowing about my personal life, at the very least; everytime they learn something about it, they think I’m going to Hell, anyway. I maybe login once a week? Tops.
2016-Present: The social group I’ve been falling in with in Raleigh uses FB heavily to organize and chat and I get pulled back on. Suddenly I’m awash in hilarious posts about the RPGs we play together, invitations to movie nights and cookouts, private chats among little sub-groups of people, etc., and I think FB is awesome again. I also blocked my dad somewhere around here so I didn’t have to read his batshit crazy white supremacist shit anymore.
I feel like Facebook isn’t a thing but an experience that is altered by the people you let in. If you let in too many shitty people, you will have a shitty Facebook, but if you promote good people into your Facebook circle, it becomes something worth while.
I got lucky. Most of my wife’s conservative family members tend to avoid politics on Facebook, and just stick to promoting Jesus and Family posts.
That’s why it’s worrying (to me, anyway) that so many people get their news and information from what they see on Facebook. If I were on the platform I would do exactly as you describe, but that then leads to… dare I say it… an echo chamber.
For someone like my father, talk of children being fondled under a pepperoni pizza and Obama being the Kenyan founder of ISIS becomes legitimate news. I mean, “everyone” is talking about it. There’s real worry out there, why is the MSM helping Hillary cover this stuff up?
That’s ultimately on the voters, not Facebook, but I think curated Facebook communities are contributing to how we got to a point where the electorate is living in different realities.
So be that counter weight. Inject yourself into their. Make the rue the day they post on Facebook! Burst their bubble so they at least read something different.
I’m not on Facebook, but how does that work? From conversations with my friends, usually when that happens it just leads to being blocked/removed as a friend. :)
If you are removed as a friend, won’t that make your Facebook experience better anyway? Seems like a win win. Either you change hearts and minds, so have better friends on Facebook, or you lose the friends that make Facebook bad.
In any event, I have a former boss that sometimes post conservative items, and occasionally I will push back in a polite way.
I feel the same way. I don’t look at it most of the time, but once in awhile I dive in to see what so-and-so is saying, and then jump to someone else. Normally it’s a wasted ten minutes of my life, but sometimes I enjoy it.
I know my 20 something daughters do this with their friends. Facebook and instagram (?) are the main means of communicating what you are up to for them.
And I try to reciprocate too, post what I am doing, add pictures, you know, actually participate on Facebook while trying hard not to turn it into a live journal for me.This is the new norm, but it’s easy to wind up over sharing. And while if I see something concerning on FB, I will pick up the phone and call that person and ask if they’re okay, etc, for some of the 20 somethings and youngers, you can sometimes see the entire break-up on there. That’s one reason I hate that stupid video going around applauding some guy about his view on millennials and their fake happiness. That’s not what I see at all.
20-somethings nothing. Dude I knew got separated and he’d post 10 things a day about break ups and shitty women.
He did it for well over a month. I had to unfollow him. This reminds me I could probably refollow, but it’s not like anything he posted was really worth reading anyway. His quasi-racist memes and occasional references to playing bass weren’t exactly something I’m jonesing for.
