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I've been shocked to discover that the cool, nice, smart people I knew in high school and college turned into bitter, closed minded, bigots in the intervening d

by lzw 16y ago

I've been shocked to discover that the cool, nice, smart people I knew in high school and college turned into bitter, closed minded, bigots in the intervening decades.... Logging into Facebook means seeing stream of inanity and reports about the night's drinking-- which I don't mind-- punctuated by ignorant political outbursts and hating on the latest groupthink target for 5 minutes of hate- which I do find dismaying. So I don't really see the attraction of facebook, and log in there very rarely now.

kaiserama 16y ago
I couldn't agree more. If my close friends and family used twitter and flickr there'd be no reason for me to ever log into FB. Despite the enormous number of users I can visualize a mass exodus from the service, it's harder for me to do this with Google which provides an actual service that would be hard to replace.
joezydeco 16y ago
All of the above, and add the "return to high-school" mentality that users start to slip into. Facebook's policy of not telling people when they've been disconnected, while understandable on their part, is a bitch on the receiving end. Wifey got unfriended last week by someone and it was a week of bitter gossip, self-questioning, and teeth gnashing among friends. What a waste of time.
edash 16y ago
Why not just remove your old high school friends as Facebook friends? What you'd have left is a small social network filled with only people you want to keep in touch with. Privacy complaints, not trusting Zuckerberg, objecting to valuation...those are Facebook complaints I can comprehend. But disliking the network of friends you created? That seems like your problem, not Facebook's.
- lzw 16y ago
  Oh, I've done that, but there isn't much draw to the site anyway, and the fact that i finally joined when I was convinced that Facebook respected privacy, only to find out that they are constantly making things public by default. To be honest, the only reason I still have a FB account is a feeling that ill need to integrate our products with the site in the future.

by lzw 16y ago

kaiserama 16y ago

I couldn't agree more. If my close friends and family used twitter and flickr there'd be no reason for me to ever log into FB. Despite the enormous number of users I can visualize a mass exodus from the service, it's harder for me to do this with Google which provides an actual service that would be hard to replace.

joezydeco 16y ago

All of the above, and add the "return to high-school" mentality that users start to slip into. Facebook's policy of not telling people when they've been disconnected, while understandable on their part, is a bitch on the receiving end. Wifey got unfriended last week by someone and it was a week of bitter gossip, self-questioning, and teeth gnashing among friends. What a waste of time.

edash 16y ago

Why not just remove your old high school friends as Facebook friends? What you'd have left is a small social network filled with only people you want to keep in touch with. Privacy complaints, not trusting Zuckerberg, objecting to valuation...those are Facebook complaints I can comprehend. But disliking the network of friends you created? That seems like your problem, not Facebook's.

lzw 16y ago
Oh, I've done that, but there isn't much draw to the site anyway, and the fact that i finally joined when I was convinced that Facebook respected privacy, only to find out that they are constantly making things public by default. To be honest, the only reason I still have a FB account is a feeling that ill need to integrate our products with the site in the future.