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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

>>The only thing I want to see on Facebook are the things I can't see elsewhere which are: personal updates and local events.

You can only get personal updates on Facebook?

What a strange thing to say.

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I think it's fairly accurate. If you have a couple dozen (or 100) friends scattered around the world, it's a lot easier to see pictures of their kids or new kitchen on a Social Media platform than to try to call them every day.

Why do you feel like you need to see pictures of their kids and new kitchen if they are scattered all over the world?

Does it make you feel like you care about them?

I can't legitimately care about 20 people living in 20 different parts of the world?

That's not what I meant.

Here's what I'm getting at: if you really cared about someone, you wouldn't settle for the bare minimum of passively consuming their uploaded photos and status updates.

I posit that Facebook is popular among people with scattered friends and relatives because it makes them feel like they care. However, in my opinion, truly caring about someone warrants more than just maintaining an awareness of what is going on in their lives by consuming their content on your news feed and occasionally clicking 'Like' or posting a comment.

In terms of social media, yes, it's the only place that will tell me that my high school friend is getting married. And to a large extent it's the only thing I will ever find that out from, depending on who we are talking about. In other words, the social updates that I go to Facebook for are updates that I cannot get elsewhere.

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