Friday, November 19, 2010

To Be or Not To Be on Facebook

Deb has a new post on why she has quit Facebook.  It's very worth reading and so are the comments.

My brother-in-law recently got himself and his two young daughters off FB; he said too many posts were raising too many questions in his household.

I'm very inclined to do the same.  I despise Facebook.  I seldom post anything there, and seldom check it.

Of the posts I receive, perhaps 1 in 10 is worth reading.  I love you, dear friends and relatives, but that doesn't mean I want to read about every time you burp. It means tell me something significant happening in your life, in your mind, in your heart.  Very few people ever do; perhaps Facebook isn't the right medium for it.  (Surely people don't  really live such dreary, banal lives!  Do they?) 

I do not have time for those fantasy games.  And unless you are sick in bed or unemployed or something else is wrong, you don't either.  Life is full of so many better things! 

In short, Facebook is a tool for which most people haven't figured out any more than an exquisitely vapid use, at best, and an evil use quite often. 

But -- it's on FB that pictures of my children and grandchildren are posted.  It's also an easy way to stay in touch with people, marginally at least.   So I'm thinking about it.  Maybe I'll de-friend all but my immediate family and as for the others, if we really want to stay in touch, we will, in other ways. 

Thank you, Deb. 

P.S.)  Never been on Twitter.  I wonder, is it even worse?

6 comments:

margaret said...

I imagine Twitter is worse - if FB is vapid, can you imagine what people 'say' in 120 characters or whatever a 'tweet' is? I keep FB for a couple of former colleagues and the daughter of a cousin who died suddenly. I still feel bad about how I failed to keep in touch with my cousin so if this is the way of being in touch with her daughter I'll use it but I far prefer to read blogs.

Anam Cara said...

I have a number of friends who have deleted those of us she sees frequently, reserving facebook for those who live distant and are harder to keep up with.

I have dropped a lot of my contacts to weed out excess posts. And I have just hidden others. That way when I want to check on them I can but don't have to read every silly thing.

I opened a tweet account- only had a few people I followed and quickly decided it was one of the stupidest things I'd ever encountered and deleted my account shortly after. I didn't feel that I had anything of interest to say and frankly wasn't interested in anything I saw tweeted.

I, too, struggle with this. I would like to drop FB, but do find it valuable in keeping up with what my kids and grands are up to. And I am often referred to interesting news posts that I would otherwise miss from some friends who apparently do nothing but read on-line newspapers. And those things keep me hooked.

Chocolatesa said...

I don't play any of the games any more, I find them pointless time-wasters. I've weeded out a lot of contacts that I don't talk to as well. I don't want to delete my account though because it still has it's uses, if used carefully.

Kacie said...

twitter is worse, in my opinion. On facebook I follow the mundane of my friend's lives, and usually they are friends and family that are far away, and it allows a little bit of daily interaction, which is better than nothing! I'm so thankful for it for that reason. And really, i don't mind the mundane and vapid from people whose daily minutae I miss.

On the other hand, twitter is ONLY status updates, it's missing the photos and messages. And it also tends to be strangers following strangers, rather than interaction between friends. Empty. Shallow.

Monica said...

We recently quit facebook at our house, but do ask the question - how to keep up with pics of family?

DebD said...

yes, keeping up with college and adult kids is a bit of a conundrum. Going back and deleting a lot off my friends list is the option I've considered too.