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Comment by rytis | Hacker News Reader

I expect candidates to have a LinkedIn profile that is up to date [...] If you don't have a LinkedIn profile, I assume you're either very junior, shady, or clueless

This is very ... interesting. So the next thing is to expect everyone be active on Facebook, otherwise they're socially awkward and perhaps mentally unstable?

EDIT:

I should have probably provided my personal experience with LI - I had LI profile for ages, and keep on maintaining it. No good ever came out of it - lots of spam, that's all. From hiring managers mostly.

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Like I said, I ignore Facebook for hiring purposes because I think the context is different. You're not expecting me to go looking at it, so I don't.

Well, there is a parallel. Not being on Facebook is very odd, so it's pretty rational to expect the person to be odd as well. In my experience it's mostly a privacy thing. Not a well-developed opinion necessarily, just an instinctual mistrust to orgs that collect lots of personal information.

WTH? I'm not on Facebook, or any other kind of social network. I don't find myself to be "out of the norm".

I don't need Facebook. In fact, nobody needs. I have the need to share what I do with everybody and I surely don't want to see every details of my friend's list. You know how I talk to them? Face to face. I give them a call, ask them if they whant to have a cup of coffee and talk about what's up.

Now, everyone I tell this responds with "What about those people you don't see a long time ago, or are away, or have been in your clas in the nth grade?" For those that are away, I use email and skype. For the rest, well, there's a reason I haven't talked to them in a long time.

There's also the point of events. I like to invited personally. Even a text is enough. I feel like the person really remembered me, and didn't just click a "send all" button.

And finaly, there's friend bloat. Lots of people I meet ask me for my facebook. they would invite me, I would add them and never remove them because of common courtesy and because of common friend pressure. "X asked me why you unfriended him. Did something happen?" No, I just don't give a damn about his cat!

I don't like facebook and I don't need facebook. I find that, while it may have some interesting uses, is just used for gloating and voyerism.

Why are people downvoting this?

Other than the unnecessary "WTH?" at the start, this is a thoughtful and considered response. Is it just the sentiment that is unpopular?

Agreed, a responsible reaction I think. It's probably getting downvoted because their are a few people on HN that are financially invested in facebook becoming obnoxiously ubiquitous.

Whether you consider yourself "out of the norm" or not has no bearing on whether you actually are. Spoiler alert: You are out of the norm.

He just gave a list of rather good reasons why a normal person might not use facebook. Yes, it is quite uncommon to see a facebook-less person nowadays. But why do you think this implies that a person who doesn't use facebook is necessarily not normal?

Nothing necessary about it. Just probably. Normal people obviously do not think these reasons are good enough not to be on Facebook, which raises the question why does he? Probably because he's not normal.

I sure wasn't expecting replies to my (angry) rant.

To start, I later realised my tone was angrier than it should. For that, I apologise. The "out of the norm" comment really ticked me in a weird way. (I don't know why, but it just did).

Now, to answer you, as this is a reply to your post.

What I really wanted to convey is that I don't need facebook. I don't think Facebook is bad. I don't hate it. But I don't like it either. I respect it as a product, and understand the impact it had in society. But don't think I don't use it only for the bad stuff I said earlier. I just don't see any use for it.

So, for a tl,dr: I don't think those reason are enough for me not to be on facebook. I'm not on facebook because I don't see enough reasons to use it. It's not "too much bad", it's "too few good".

Why do you say that normal people do not think these reasons good enough? Why can't both the facebook-users and the non-facebook-users be normal?

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