4 ms·

I think that announcing "I'm not on Facebook" is sort of like announcing "I don't watch TV." That's nice, but I think you care more than anyone else you're tell

by johnfn 16y ago

I think that announcing "I'm not on Facebook" is sort of like announcing "I don't watch TV." That's nice, but I think you care more than anyone else you're telling. I say this tongue in cheek of course because I'm always telling everyone that I don't use Facebook. It's kind of difficult at times, but really, the people who I want to talk to will still find ways to talk to me. Better, I find that not using Facebook frees up a lot of time that I wasn't really aware that I was using.

deleted 16y ago
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ab9 16y ago
That's a common sentiment. Indeed, I hear people liken "I'm not on Facebook" to "I don't watch TV" more often than I hear people say "I'm not on Facebook."
- awakeasleep 16y ago
  I get that this is a joke, but I believe it touches on an important subject. And this article was much more than the author announcing that he doesn't use FB-- That announcement was only an introduction to an article about possible downsides to sharing social information I know it isn't a popular sentiment among hacker circles but if you stop to think, there are a lot of reasons to be cautious. Information about people has always been a precious commodity and now we're giving it away.
  - rblion 16y ago
    I agree. Another subtlety I noticed is this generation's concept of Self is becoming contorted into your number of 'Friends' and quantity of 'Likes'. Not really this intelligent HN crowd but, more so the other 99% of society that unconsciously uses fb.
    - mayank 16y ago
      > Another subtlety I noticed is this generation's concept of Self is becoming contorted into your number of 'Friends' and quantity of 'Likes'. Not really this intelligent HN crowd but, more so the other 99% of society that unconsciously uses fb. Yes, us intelligent folk here on HN would never stoop to accumulate arbitrary, meaningless "likes" (or "points" if you will) based on some groupthink valuation of our opinions. And us hackers would never consider shaping our published opinions to match the group's thinking so that we could accumulate more of these..."likes".
      - yters 16y ago
        Liked!
    - Paulomus 16y ago
      This reminds me of the concept of "whuffie" in Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" where he posits an entire future society based on these principles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie It did not occur to me at the time I read it that this was based on contemporary online media. It is interesting to consider that society might actually be moving in that direction.
rsaarelm 16y ago
If I don't watch TV, it doesn't matter much to me if all my friends are. If I'm not on Facebook and all my friends are, I may miss out a lot of social interaction I'd otherwise participate in, and which might occur somewhere elsewhere from Facebook if more people from my social circle weren't on it. So it looks like it'll benefit me more if I can make other people not do the thing by announcing I'm not doing it for Facebook than for TV.
- danieldon 16y ago
  miss out a lot of social interaction http://i.imgur.com/EpTdz.png http://i.imgur.com/EpTdz.png from http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... This has been my experience as well.
  - whimsy 16y ago
    That was a great slide deck. Thanks for the link.
- buro9 16y ago
  > I may miss out a lot of social interaction I'd otherwise participate in The thing I believe about Facebook is that it's usage figures are driven by an underlying fear in those that use it that they may miss out on some social event between their friends. I have three further beliefs in this area: 1) That Facebook is becoming the new TV in terms of using cognitive surplus and 2) that it is becoming the media in which people wait for a shared social event (see below), and 3) that games within Facebook are used because of the fear of missing a shared social event. To the latter first, if people are on Facebook and stuff is changing ever so subtly all the while, then the people feel a sense of anticipation that something may happen, and they really don't want to be the one person in their social group to miss it. They play Farmville because it passes the time and amuses them, but they only do so because it is within Facebook. They would not leave Facebook to play Farmville as Facebook is where the social event will appear and that is what they don't want to miss. So Farmville and other games within Facebook are used by those who fear missing a social event as a tool to help justify to themselves staying on Facebook waiting for the social event. To the second, TV used to deliver social events. In the UK many people still recall the first time that they saw Boy George on Top Of The Pops and the chat across the country the next day. It was a shared social event that works because everyone witnesses it at the same time. The fragmentation of TV from the few terrestrial channels into hundreds of channels and the rise of the internet have both heavily diluted the ability for TV to deliver this king of shared social event. Aside from X Factor train wrecks, not much can be relied upon to have been seen by the majority of your social circle. And to the first I was at a Facebook sales presentation only yesterday in Covent Garden and some fantastical statistic was quoted along the lines of "X billion minutes are spent on Facebook each month". In my head I heard the word "wasted" rather than "spent" and recalled Clay Shirky's rant on this http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for... better distilled here as the key quote http://www.cybersoc.com/2008/07/clay-shirky-tal.html http://www.cybersoc.com/2008/07/clay-shirky-tal.html . Facebook now consumes the cognitive surplus that TV used to monopolise. 28 minutes on average, every Facebook user spends on Facebook every day (number taken from yesterday's presentation). To me, not using Facebook is to say that I'm alright about, and not afraid of, missing the next shared social event in my circle of friends. It's saying that I'm OK working on other things in my spare time (projects, or doing stuff with my girl) rather than burning through my cognitive surplus with nothing to show for it. For me, not being on Facebook is a statement about being proactive in my life, to make the most of it. So when people ask why I'm not on Facebook, I tell them how I see it is a fear-driven thing that would consume my time and give me little in return. I share some of the same concerns as per the article, but more than that I want to use my life as best I can. For the same kind of reasons that I don't watch TV (not being afraid of missing the next shared social event) I don't use Facebook. Strangely, I don't feel that about Twitter. Twitter isn't a tool that appears to be driven by fear of missing something, the very temporary nature of it's updates passing by in a stream mean that it's inevitable that you miss things. Instead Twitter feels to me more about sharing and inspiring others, it's information dissemination rather than a magnet for shared social events. I'm on Twitter, and I use it as a creative tool to feed ideas about things to try and do. Now I wonder whether the author of the article is on Twitter, as most of his arguments could be used there too... in which case are they really the reason he's not on Facebook?

by johnfn 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

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deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

ab9 16y ago

That's a common sentiment. Indeed, I hear people liken "I'm not on Facebook" to "I don't watch TV" more often than I hear people say "I'm not on Facebook."

awakeasleep 16y ago
I get that this is a joke, but I believe it touches on an important subject. And this article was much more than the author announcing that he doesn't use FB-- That announcement was only an introduction to an article about possible downsides to sharing social information I know it isn't a popular sentiment among hacker circles but if you stop to think, there are a lot of reasons to be cautious. Information about people has always been a precious commodity and now we're giving it away.
- rblion 16y ago
  I agree. Another subtlety I noticed is this generation's concept of Self is becoming contorted into your number of 'Friends' and quantity of 'Likes'. Not really this intelligent HN crowd but, more so the other 99% of society that unconsciously uses fb.
  - mayank 16y ago
    > Another subtlety I noticed is this generation's concept of Self is becoming contorted into your number of 'Friends' and quantity of 'Likes'. Not really this intelligent HN crowd but, more so the other 99% of society that unconsciously uses fb. Yes, us intelligent folk here on HN would never stoop to accumulate arbitrary, meaningless "likes" (or "points" if you will) based on some groupthink valuation of our opinions. And us hackers would never consider shaping our published opinions to match the group's thinking so that we could accumulate more of these..."likes".
    - yters 16y ago
      Liked!
  - Paulomus 16y ago
    This reminds me of the concept of "whuffie" in Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" where he posits an entire future society based on these principles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie It did not occur to me at the time I read it that this was based on contemporary online media. It is interesting to consider that society might actually be moving in that direction.

rsaarelm 16y ago

If I don't watch TV, it doesn't matter much to me if all my friends are. If I'm not on Facebook and all my friends are, I may miss out a lot of social interaction I'd otherwise participate in, and which might occur somewhere elsewhere from Facebook if more people from my social circle weren't on it. So it looks like it'll benefit me more if I can make other people not do the thing by announcing I'm not doing it for Facebook than for TV.

danieldon 16y ago
miss out a lot of social interaction http://i.imgur.com/EpTdz.png http://i.imgur.com/EpTdz.png from http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... This has been my experience as well.
- whimsy 16y ago
  That was a great slide deck. Thanks for the link.
buro9 16y ago
> I may miss out a lot of social interaction I'd otherwise participate in The thing I believe about Facebook is that it's usage figures are driven by an underlying fear in those that use it that they may miss out on some social event between their friends. I have three further beliefs in this area: 1) That Facebook is becoming the new TV in terms of using cognitive surplus and 2) that it is becoming the media in which people wait for a shared social event (see below), and 3) that games within Facebook are used because of the fear of missing a shared social event. To the latter first, if people are on Facebook and stuff is changing ever so subtly all the while, then the people feel a sense of anticipation that something may happen, and they really don't want to be the one person in their social group to miss it. They play Farmville because it passes the time and amuses them, but they only do so because it is within Facebook. They would not leave Facebook to play Farmville as Facebook is where the social event will appear and that is what they don't want to miss. So Farmville and other games within Facebook are used by those who fear missing a social event as a tool to help justify to themselves staying on Facebook waiting for the social event. To the second, TV used to deliver social events. In the UK many people still recall the first time that they saw Boy George on Top Of The Pops and the chat across the country the next day. It was a shared social event that works because everyone witnesses it at the same time. The fragmentation of TV from the few terrestrial channels into hundreds of channels and the rise of the internet have both heavily diluted the ability for TV to deliver this king of shared social event. Aside from X Factor train wrecks, not much can be relied upon to have been seen by the majority of your social circle. And to the first I was at a Facebook sales presentation only yesterday in Covent Garden and some fantastical statistic was quoted along the lines of "X billion minutes are spent on Facebook each month". In my head I heard the word "wasted" rather than "spent" and recalled Clay Shirky's rant on this http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for... better distilled here as the key quote http://www.cybersoc.com/2008/07/clay-shirky-tal.html http://www.cybersoc.com/2008/07/clay-shirky-tal.html . Facebook now consumes the cognitive surplus that TV used to monopolise. 28 minutes on average, every Facebook user spends on Facebook every day (number taken from yesterday's presentation). To me, not using Facebook is to say that I'm alright about, and not afraid of, missing the next shared social event in my circle of friends. It's saying that I'm OK working on other things in my spare time (projects, or doing stuff with my girl) rather than burning through my cognitive surplus with nothing to show for it. For me, not being on Facebook is a statement about being proactive in my life, to make the most of it. So when people ask why I'm not on Facebook, I tell them how I see it is a fear-driven thing that would consume my time and give me little in return. I share some of the same concerns as per the article, but more than that I want to use my life as best I can. For the same kind of reasons that I don't watch TV (not being afraid of missing the next shared social event) I don't use Facebook. Strangely, I don't feel that about Twitter. Twitter isn't a tool that appears to be driven by fear of missing something, the very temporary nature of it's updates passing by in a stream mean that it's inevitable that you miss things. Instead Twitter feels to me more about sharing and inspiring others, it's information dissemination rather than a magnet for shared social events. I'm on Twitter, and I use it as a creative tool to feed ideas about things to try and do. Now I wonder whether the author of the article is on Twitter, as most of his arguments could be used there too... in which case are they really the reason he's not on Facebook?