Facebook Isn't Worth It
seersuckermag.com
seersuckermag.com
But I also know that there are people who use Facebook in a way that strengthens, augments and reinforces real-life relationships. I've also read of studies that show a positive, not a negative, correlation between time spent on social media and how engaged people are with others in person. Some will say, "well, duh" to that, and will shake their heads at an article like this, which to them only shows that someone doesn't know how to use Facebook.
Both experiences are valid. I follow a sociologist on Twitter who writes a lot of essays from the latter viewpoint. To him, it's a theoretical split. There is the "digital dualist" theory, that basically says online/offline is a zero sum game and social media makes friendships shallow and disposable, and there is the "augmented reality" theory that all is connected, that what we do online is real life and not something different. And he holds the latter theory to be correct while the former, he finds simplistic, sentimental and broken. (I'm thinking of @nathanjurgenson if anyone wants to follow along, have done my best to represent his views but obviously this summary is my own)
I disagree with all of the above. It has become ever more clear to me that some people really do use and experience Facebook in a dualistic way while others do not. There is no one, unified, grand theory of Facebook that encompasses all experiences. Both camps would like to say, "This is how it is, period", but they are really saying, "This is how it is for me".
You pose that they "are just someone's experience and our experiences vary," and I would say that is the entire point of posts like these. Experiences do vary, and you cannot experience or test for them all. By sharing our experiences -- good or bad -- they present you with invaluable information. The proverbial mile in a man's shoes. A man who can feel like the Emperor has no clothes, and feels compelled to cry out against the social trend. Or a person who was empowered by social media, because of an unexpected exchange on a whim. Which brings me to my point.
For the longest time, I didn't understand Twitter. There was a fundamental disconnect, and all the weird syntax and limits were off putting. Then one night, during a the intermission of a hockey game, a humorous moment happened between the analysts. In that moment, I recalled I was following Jeremy Roenick, one of the analysts involved in the exchange, on Twitter. So I pulled my phone, tweeted at him, "LOL. That was awesome." And slipped my phone back in to my pocket.
Imagine my surprise when the intermission had concluded and the puck dropped for the third period when my phone buzzed. It was Jeremy Roenick on Twitter, just saying thanks. No, really, imagine my surprise. This is old hat to everyone already on the Twitter tip, but my mind had just been blown to pieces. Imagine trying to break that scenario down for anyone around the dawn of television? I used a device to talk to the man on the TV, and he talked back, in real time. Modern witchcraft. In that moment I switched from "Twitter is stupid," to, "Twitter is the single greatest thing since the last wild declaration I've made." I understood it finally, Twitter connects the world, directly.
You can say that he "doesn't know how to use Facebook" and even be correct, but that doesn't matter. To him, until he gets new information or insight, his opinion and experience with the product is absolute. It happened and here's how he felt. There's valuable information about the human experience in why he feels that way, and discussion to be had about why people seem to experience this duality. And the discussion is only going to evolve and change as we both grow the web and social, as well as when more of the world's youth who have never lived without these tools continue to grow online; as more of the world's cultures begin to increase their presence online and inter-mingle.
These posts, while agreeably fixated on the opinions of individuals, are part of the process for all of us as a whole. Also, ironically, the act of the post itself is sharing something socially, albeit not first party on Facebook.
My mother, who lives in the countryside, no Internet, late 50s, first saw her 2-year old niece when I showed her the photos my cousin had posted on Facebook. She was amazed and happy at the same time.
So yes, while for some Facebook may look like this juggernaut that tries to destroy everything on its path, for others is just a way to experience some emotions that otherwise wouldn't be possible.
In the early days, when the info on your profile was the killer app, I closely curated mine as though it were my online representation of myself.
When my college girlfriend broke up with me, it became a tool of obsession to desperately try to understand why it happened.
Then I forced myself not to check her profile for almost a year, and it was a representation of my willpower and reconstructed self-esteem.
When Facebook made all of your profile entries into linkable graph objects, among other changes that destroyed privacy, I rebelled and shut down my Facebook account.
After leaving grad school, I eventually reactivated, because I realized that when I wanted to visit people, Facebook was by far the easiest way to get in touch.
Nowadays, I have built a really strong circle of people I know from real life but keep in touch mostly on Facebook, and I can honestly say that it's been an intellectual revolution for me. I exchange ideas with people and have debates that I rarely have in person. It's absolutely broadened my horizons. It's made me a much better writer, debater, and communicator.
Obviously, Facebook is what you make of it. Sure, you have to navigate the minefield of what Zuckerberg wants it to be, but for me, it's become indispensable as communication tool, and I pity people who let it be a source of negativity to them instead of taking the positive aspects of it for what it's worth. It's just a tool.
e.g.: Extroverts use Facebook to enhance relationships while introverts rely on Facebook too much instead of interacting with people.
But I, and most of my close friends, get HUGE social utility from the platform. Some just use it for Events, some for micro-blogging, some for passively keeping in touch, some for messaging, etc. etc. But I know lots of people much better because of Facebook.
And that is also factual.
Facebook is worth it for a lot of people. But it's easy to run too far against the diminishing returns that additional time on it yields, and it's easy to slam doors in your future that may otherwise have been valuable.
Watching "Mike & Molly" on CBS is telling me that in the future none of that matter. If the granny network has a show about pot-smoking and guys going down on senior citizens, then those types of photos will be considered PG-13 in the near future.
They post photos they take at interesting parties. Pretty standard for college but enough to twist any of them into grossly irresponsible, bad people if they ever decide to try to change something controlled by a powerful entity that chooses to fight back.
Yeah, Obama can say he's done cocaine and other things, but to my knowledge he told of those things to diffuse any potential ammo the other side could use against him in the presidential election - long after he had already become a very powerful man. It is my fear that many people will simply be denied entry at the gate. And I'm not expecting them to be running for office, but I am expecting a lot of them to join NGO's where they will need to take part in some level of political struggle.
A large number of them also apparently spend what I would consider a very unhealthy amount of time on Facebook posting angry, racist messages that just seem to continually make them angrier and more racist as they feed off of one another. I've lost a lot of respect for a lot of people because of the things they put on Facebook. It's like, they log on to the site and all filters go off.
I've found that with the exception of 2 or 3 people who only seem to communicate with the outside world via their Facebook account, everyone that I follow whom I genuinely want to keep up with are ones I was already talking to through other channels.
Myself and most of my friends use Skype quite extensively for keeping in touch. Others email and use Google Talk.
I don't use FB at all anymore, I have a deactivated account that I will log into once every year and a half or so when I need somebody's phone number and I don't have their email address. There really is a lot of value in how connected the network is, but to be honest I find my life to be infinitely more satisfying when I'm not spending most of it comparing myself to others. If I want to communicate, I like to maximize bandwidth, and use phone if I can't video chat or be in person. I hate texting because of how little communication happens compared with a phone call. So many misunderstandings happen when you strip out the vocal layer and limit the text length so drastically.
"I used to like that guy, until I found out he thinks things what are different from things I think"
(racists are still terrible OK)
I don't mind that they have different opinions/views, I just meant that after reconnecting came the realization that we have virtually nothing in common anymore, so I didn't really derive any benefit out of it in the sense that it didn't really rekindle any old friendships.
Nothing wrong with that at all and I can respect that, our lives just went in different directions.
The only ones where I was really bothered/lost respect where the ones constantly posting the racist/hateful stuff, which certainly wasn't all of them, but a large enough portion that a combination of these two factors has just made the whole experience useless at best.
It's not the public sector job so much as the ability to participate in politics to seek change without giving a checkmate to any potential adversary who has police friends that can view any content.
a.k.a. "listening to the sound of my own voice"
But you set up the argument incorrectly. It's not a matter of whether or not one gets utility from Facebook. It's a matter of whether that utility is worth the cost. I would posit (although cannot prove) that most Facebook users are not aware of what the platform is costing them in terms of time and attention (not to mention things that they say that make them ineligible for a lot of jobs). They are only aware of the benefits they are getting.
> "a.k.a. "listening to the sound of my own voice""
Why do we have to shit all over people like that? People writing crap onto a website where other people seem to respond positively to it: listening to the sound of one's own voice.
Why is it that every time some group of people are having fun, we need to stomp on their sandcastle and call them names?
I can see the second part of your argument (though IMO it's massively overblown), but that first part is just mean-spirited and unnecessary.
Because, obviously, all social interactions that existed 10 years ago were perfectly natural and acceptable, but new types of social interactions that the youngsters are using are evil and bad and evidence of the speedy decline of civilization.
I would suggest its because facebook isn't regarded as really being "social". Social used to mean actually meeting people, now it means clicking a box. "Social" has been redefined to a point many people cannot accept its new meaning.
Because that's basically what it is. Micro-blogging serves two purposes: to seek attention and to feel good about oneself (usually in the form of a rant that one gets off their chest). So describing it as listening to the sound of one's voice seems appropriate.
I enjoy reading about my aunt baking, photos that show my brother is enjoying his new job, the games my school friends are playing and enjoying. Also, out of all of those people I've never seen any of them post anything which would make them ineligible for a job, I only see such things on websites like reddit.
Similarly, I don't mind Facebook doing whatever they do and being useful to a lot of people. What saddens me is how other (often superior) options become slowly unavailable.
Think the Pool Hall in "Dazed and Confused" or the bar in "Cheers" for a couple pop culture examples. From both pop culture references and anecdotal evidence I've collected, it seems the "if nothing else is going on we always meet at x place" used to be more common than it is now. Now everyone wants to know who's going to be there, when, etc. before they decide whether to go.
With this in mind, the only benefit of the group I can think of was that it helped gather “background information.”
The problem I see with a lot of people, esp in North America (or this may just be my personal experience) is they add EVERYBODY to Facebook. Just met you, "hey, you on Facebook?" whereas I only have people that I know: family, friends, ex-collegues, old school friends. If you have 800 "friends" on Facebook then you're going to be inundated with garbage. You also have the option of "spring cleaning" your friends list. Haven't spoken to you in a long time, unfriend. I don't understand this thing where you add strangers to your social circle, there's a lot of personal information on there.
To me, the Internet and social media, are simply a change. Just like the telephone was a "change". Before then, you'd talk to people face-to-face, (or using smoke signals) so I'd imagine if we looked through some newspapers when telephones first came in, we'd probably see this exact same post.
That's the exact same point I was trying to make to one of my colleagues when she saying that relying on Facebook to communicate with your friends is a mistake, while phone conversations are the way to go. I was telling her that my grandma was looking at a telephone as the work of the devil, not that she was religious or anything, just that the unexpected ringing of it would stop any hardworking people from doing their job so that it would only be a waste of time and resources. My friend wasn't convinced, she was asking me "but how could your grand-mother live without a telephone?".
It happens very often, friend do not answer phone or text but will notice Facebook message right away.
I can't even compare conversations in comments in a photo of me in hospital with anything else. My friends (who mostly didn't know each other) learned who is worried about me and arranged a visit to hospital together right under my photo in comments.
People tend to abuse Facebook a lot. But if you use it as a tool it's fine.
I just don't get any satisfaction from maintaining a list of acquaintances and classmates that I happen to know because we happened to go the same school and I have no interest in reading about their lives and stalking them and finding out who their girlfriend/boyfriends are and who their newest friend is.
I like the traditional way of friendship and communication because it has a 'natural permission setting'. For example if you ask my close friends they can tell you a lot of stuff about me, but once you get a little further, they wont know that much.
Facebook creates this artificial thing where you can get a lot of information about someone without them knowing and you can exchange a very small amount in return.
In the traditional way, if you care enough about me to want to know if I'm single or not, you will have to ask me (explicit expression) but using Facebook you can just look it up (implicit).
Nobody I know in my circle of IRL friends and family uses it anymore when you can sign up to twitter under a nym and directly ask guys like Charlie Miller questions about exploit payload delivery instead of being drowned in an avalance of spam wall posts, annoying quiz results, farm watering requests, and endless PMs from ex girlfriends or people from highschool you have no intention of talking to ever again because you didn't like them then, why would you want to be their e-friend now.
i prefer to have a private jabber/OTR chatroom open with a bunch of friends in it to talk to each other back and forth like a slow room IRC channel all day. privacy ftw so nobody ends up fired when going on a rant about a project, their company or relationships.
That would be ideal, but I doubt the US government would allow a private communication platform to operate on a large scale. Unless it was hosted outside of the states, it would be quickly backdoored for their benefit.
I've had ideas like that in the past (think Twitter crossed with GPG), but I think you'd struggle to get people adopting the platform.
I don't have any of the same problems you do. So for me there is a strong and obvious relationship between the maturity of your friends and the maturity of their posts.
Do you guy's enjoy circle jerking around tagging each other's pics and liking stuff? Sounds pretty awesome
I simply use it as a shared address book/messaging/event system.
It always amazes me that a single web site can evoke such bizarre reactions such as this.
To me, twitter is the ultimate example of the "cult of the celebrity", as most people on twitter seem to follow celebrities, in order to read what vacuous comments they can fit into 140 characters.
On the other hand, Facebook is the ideal system for me to keep in contact and up-to-date with friends and family who live very far away from me, and see what is going on in their lives.
Now, obviously we've just had different views. Despite the fact I've tried, and failed, to get "into" twitter more than once, enough clever people use it that I assume I am missing something, or it just isn't my vibe. But for me Facebook has a much, much higher quality vs. garbage ratio than Twitter.
I know far more people who check their email religiously than check Facebook.
Two years ago it was a worthless, annoying site with news feed full of mommies talking about their kids' snot.
So I engaged with the site to make it my own.
Today, because of relationships sustained and informed by Facebook, I'm doing Crossfit, visiting old friends in person more frequently, sending packages to new and old friends who are deployed to Afghanistan, and joining events like Tough Mudder and GoRuck Challenges.
I think often about the privacy issues, the time suck that it can be, but I also have to think about positive changes that have come about because of the way I've used this particular tool. For me FB it's a bigtime net positive.
Yup, but my point, poorly made perhaps, is that you define your communication tendencies, and FB is just another communication tool. Not vice versa as the author intimates.
So, good point!!!!!
Then its nothing more than a forum with photos of your friends and family, downloaded them and untag yourself.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Not having a facebook account (or any social media website account) forced me to be more active. It forced me to contact my friends face to face. This has HUGE advantages.
This notion that facebook is integrated into our lives tightly is absolutely an illusion; one that Facebook relys on (or any site like it). Take the initiative and go out of your way to contact your friends/family "the old fasioned way".
Rallying groups for a cause isn't as hard as it seems to be, either. You just have to work a bit more. So what? Our society(ies) is/are becoming so lazy it's almost unbearable.
Facebook does not dictate your life in any way, shape or form. There are many people who don't use it and are just fine without it.
I'd much prefer to see my friends face-to-face, but I can't afford to fly very often.
Use a phone. Use the postal system. Yes, it's not as "instant" but it at least shows that you put in work to contact them. Or you can use open technologies like Jitsi or Ekiga to do video chat with them (if they are willing. If they aren't, then perhaps explain to them why it's important). There are options out there. Facebook isn't the ONLY technology that closes the gap.
So phone or video chat is impossible and using the postal system is just being stupid.
Complacency is not a good argument: "the majority of people I know use it so it shouldn't be criticized for the sake of convenience". That's what I hear, maybe I'm deaf.
Jitsi or Ekiga or any other type of open technology can effectively replace facebook quite well. They also give you "the psychological benefits of just feeling connected". I would submit that the Internet fills that niche, not Facebook or others like it.
People can use it all they want. Fine, no problem. But to lean on the idea that it is somehow impossible to delete an account without becoming a hermit is, in my view, a complete asinine idea.
I also think it's important to not get off track from my original point which is: It is not the end of your social life if you decide to delete your facebook account (or google or twitter etc.). That is my point.
I emphasize "open" because those technologies are open for review by thousands of eyes. If there are privacy issues it will be known and tended to. Using something like Skype does not ensure your privacy; especially since now it is more centralized and not p2p. There has been many articles released about the privacy concerns of using Skype (wiretapping, China, etc.). I, for one, do not ever want to put my privacy in the back seat for the sake of convenience and I think it's imperative to educate or at least mention the problems with closed technologies that are supposed to be "private".
Jitsi, as far as I can tell, runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Those platforms are pretty much covered. I'm not sure if it runs on Android or iOS. Though, I'm sure there are people working on mobile solutions (I am, at least). I wouldn't dismiss it so easily. Skype runs like utter crap on Linux systems and while Jitsi may not run all that well compared to Skype, it is at least open sourced and free software so people can work on it.
Email is essentially a social network. A social network is simply, at its core, a system which allows friends/family/other to communicate and keep up to date with each other. In fact, I would go so far as to say the original social network is not Facebook or MySpace but the Internet itself.
Again, I'm not trying to suggest there are alternatives that can completely replace Facebook (or others) convenience factor. Not at all. I am simply saying, you don't need it.
I'm assuming you don't have kids and don't need an easy way to share photos with family. You know, the parents that ask you to email all of your photos?
I know that piles of baby photos are annoying, but they are less annoying then when they are forced on you via email. In FB at least you can squelch people if they annoy you. Or if you really like your friends, you can create a separate account for baby pics and only post to that account.
While I may not have children, I have close friends who do and family that does. So what? I communicate with them just fine and share bday photos like everyone else without a problem and without being tied to facebook.
If you have a problem with annoying photo's without facebook, then may I suggest telling those involved with sending you too much info/photo's to maybe limit it a bit? It's not hard to do and you can do it in such a way that doesn't sound mean. For such a "social network" people have trouble communicating with each other, it seems.
How does everyone else do this? How do people get both sets of grandparents checking the same photo sharing site where mom can take pictures at the playground and share instantly? What photo site is easy enough that the grandparents can snap photos on their smartphone (that they barely know how to use) that lets them easily upload them?
> It is not the only means of communication or file sharing.
Of course not. The network effect makes it easy to push the last few missing family members onto it for a narrow purpose.
> If you have a problem with annoying photo's without facebook, then may I suggest telling those involved with sending you too much info/photo's to maybe limit it a bit?
I would never tell new parents that. Luckily, some forms of sharing are easy to rate limit.
> For such a "social network" people have trouble communicating with each other, it seems
That's just it. Email isn't really a social network.
The first thing that comes to mind is that, at least in my social circle, no one has a land line. We move a lot. We change cell phone numbers (carrier problems, relationship issues, who knows).
Its arguable that a FB presence is actually more stable than a physical presence for some social groups. Its not an all encompassing solution for human interaction by any means, but "worth it" is a very subjective term.
He probably should have posted it on FB.
But what I really want to say is that I love the seersucker web design. Killer clean, long form posts, great typography... It's awesome!
I have observed something similar with IRC channels 15 years ago.
Basically he is complaining about human nature in a cyberspace enabled world.
On the topic , facebook is more of a rss feed for me than social network.
Umm, who really thinks that?