6 ms·

I wish I could, but my elderly parents live on Facebook. They’ll never send me a text, never call my phone, never send me an email. It’s always a Facebook messa

I wish I could, but my elderly parents live on Facebook. They’ll never send me a text, never call my phone, never send me an email. It’s always a Facebook message or call, and they’re upset and confused if I don’t answer.

d369c353a12301 7y ago
>and they’re upset and confused if I don’t answer. Then just let them be upset. Try to explain it to them, but if they don't accept it, then let them be upset. If you back down they will never ever learn it. Never. Not a chance.
- sbzodnsbd 7y ago
  Parents are hard to cut off. My parents are as paranoid as I am (grew up in a US enabled dictatorship) so it was easy to get them to use Signal. If they weren’t so cool, I’d use FB or WhatsApp But my aunts and uncles and cousins (who, ironically also grew up in this dictatorship) laugh and use Facebook. That’s cool. I don’t talk to them often. They know I love them. And they know I won’t use FB.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > Parents are hard to cut off. You wouldn't be cutting them off. They'd be cutting you off by refusing to use any of the myriad other communications methods.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
If you got rid of your facebook account, they will find another way to contact you. And then they are also more likely to leave facebook, or at least use it less. I had people complain when I dropped whatsapp and say that they wouldn't be able to get hold of me if I stopped using it. I just told them it crashed my phone too often and then they found other ways to contact me.
- gooseus 7y ago
  Exactly. This line of reasoning is just an excuse that people use to justify maintaining the status quo rather than doing some hard work to change it. These grandpeople had to have been using something else 10 years ago to communicate with their grandkids... and then over these 10 years then simultaneously learned how to use FB, forgot how to use that other technology they'd used their whole life, and also lost the ability to learn how to use any other communication technology? Not impossible with cognitive deterioration, but probably a lot more rare than this excuse. If my grandparents were still alive today I'd just tell them that Facebook was controlled by the Democrats and we should use X,Y, or Z instead of effectively donating to Obama's campaign. They'd have deleted the app and gone back to text messages and phone calls by the end of dinner.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Interesting tactic. I have started telling people that I have joined the technological wing of the Amish and that Facebook was built by the devil. It gets very little push-back compared to listing more concrete reasons, complete with examples, of Facebook's actual documented behaviour. Doing that gets me nowhere fast, but if I use exaggerated nonsense people seem to just go along with it while nodding sagely.
- 0x445442 7y ago
  > complain when I dropped whatsapp and say that they wouldn't be able to get hold of me This blows my mind. I mean having Whatsapp implies one has a phone which implies one can receive SMS messages or God forbid, a phone call.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Yes, but in this particular case it would have been an international phone call and as everybody knows, those are clearly impossible.
- eswat 7y ago
  Not if they’re not well-off in a country that has Free Basics. Hard to say no to free when not just your friends and family, but pretty much your culture, uses Facebook as it’s the de facto standard.
grey-area 7y ago
You could. Try it and see. Being on Facebook is probably incredibly damaging for them in terms of what news they are exposed to anyway, you’d be doing them a favour.

d369c353a12301 7y ago

>and they’re upset and confused if I don’t answer. Then just let them be upset. Try to explain it to them, but if they don't accept it, then let them be upset. If you back down they will never ever learn it. Never. Not a chance.

sbzodnsbd 7y ago
Parents are hard to cut off. My parents are as paranoid as I am (grew up in a US enabled dictatorship) so it was easy to get them to use Signal. If they weren’t so cool, I’d use FB or WhatsApp But my aunts and uncles and cousins (who, ironically also grew up in this dictatorship) laugh and use Facebook. That’s cool. I don’t talk to them often. They know I love them. And they know I won’t use FB.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Parents are hard to cut off. You wouldn't be cutting them off. They'd be cutting you off by refusing to use any of the myriad other communications methods.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

If you got rid of your facebook account, they will find another way to contact you. And then they are also more likely to leave facebook, or at least use it less. I had people complain when I dropped whatsapp and say that they wouldn't be able to get hold of me if I stopped using it. I just told them it crashed my phone too often and then they found other ways to contact me.

gooseus 7y ago
Exactly. This line of reasoning is just an excuse that people use to justify maintaining the status quo rather than doing some hard work to change it. These grandpeople had to have been using something else 10 years ago to communicate with their grandkids... and then over these 10 years then simultaneously learned how to use FB, forgot how to use that other technology they'd used their whole life, and also lost the ability to learn how to use any other communication technology? Not impossible with cognitive deterioration, but probably a lot more rare than this excuse. If my grandparents were still alive today I'd just tell them that Facebook was controlled by the Democrats and we should use X,Y, or Z instead of effectively donating to Obama's campaign. They'd have deleted the app and gone back to text messages and phone calls by the end of dinner.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Interesting tactic. I have started telling people that I have joined the technological wing of the Amish and that Facebook was built by the devil. It gets very little push-back compared to listing more concrete reasons, complete with examples, of Facebook's actual documented behaviour. Doing that gets me nowhere fast, but if I use exaggerated nonsense people seem to just go along with it while nodding sagely.
0x445442 7y ago
> complain when I dropped whatsapp and say that they wouldn't be able to get hold of me This blows my mind. I mean having Whatsapp implies one has a phone which implies one can receive SMS messages or God forbid, a phone call.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Yes, but in this particular case it would have been an international phone call and as everybody knows, those are clearly impossible.
eswat 7y ago
Not if they’re not well-off in a country that has Free Basics. Hard to say no to free when not just your friends and family, but pretty much your culture, uses Facebook as it’s the de facto standard.

grey-area 7y ago

You could. Try it and see. Being on Facebook is probably incredibly damaging for them in terms of what news they are exposed to anyway, you’d be doing them a favour.