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In my experience, Facebook used to be a cool thing to be on when you were documenting college party shenanigans and sharing pictures with friends, before it rea

by sizzle 7y ago

In my experience, Facebook used to be a cool thing to be on when you were documenting college party shenanigans and sharing pictures with friends, before it reached mass adoption to the point that your parents/grandparents were trying to add you as a friend. This was a time when organizing/sharing pictures with friends digitally was not a straightforward process. I've come to terms with a simple fact of life that after graduating, it gets harder to make friends as you get older and start to settle down away from your college towns. Most of the acquaintances I've added on Facebook might as well not exist as we don't talk offline and my core circle of friends communicate over imessage/sms or various chat apps and we try to make time to see each other, further cementing our friendships offline. Another thing that bothers me about Facebook since I first joined around the time a .edu ending email address was required (I think?), is that everytime I visit the site the new interface and feature bloat makes it feel less and less like what made it dead simple to connect with people back in earlier times. The current experience for me consists of a noisy ad infested newsfeed, ultra-optimized to inject itself straight into your brain's reward center with statistically significant A/B tested precision and autoplaying clickbait media nonsense, all while functioning as an echo-chamber for long-lost acquaintance's political outrage spam. I wonder if people from my age cohort feel similar cognitive dissonance and that's why Facebook isn't even on their mind career wise, cause it's like an ancient digital museum that houses dusty pictures from their younger years and has long been replaced by Instagram. Anyone out there relate?

scrape_it 7y ago
you are not alone and I can definitely relate. 12 years ago FB was such a different place as I remember it. It was thriving and everybody was having a good time on it. I recently joined Facebook again for my small side biz and immediately I get Friend Adds from Korean call girls and weird chinese gambling sites. It's great that a province in India likes my content so much but not exactly a target market. Then I get weird messages from people telling me about their life situation. What's most striking is the seemingly absent moderation, its like sometime in the past 12 years, theres nobody at the driver wheel, that "vacancy" despite the huge number of people on the platform, feels so familiar, literally the exact same vibe I got from MySpace, then it hit me, Facebook has been in MySpace stage for at least a year. In addition, the political image of FB and Mark Cuckerberg has certainly taken a nose dive. I can't believe he still thinks people are going to vote for him. It's arrogance, and the organizations are largely a reflection of its founders, and it shows. Tl;dr: joined FB as a small biz, gets immediately spammed, reminded of MySpace.
JohnFen 7y ago
> a simple fact of life that after graduating, it gets harder to make friends as you get older This is not really a simple fact of life, in my opinion. It only gets harder because people make less of an effort. If you put as much time and energy into being social later in life as you do in college, then it isn't any harder to make new friends. The main difference is that in school, you're automatically surrounded by a lot of varied people. Out of school, that's not automatic -- you have to intentionally put yourself in such situation. Often this is done by joining and participating in clubs and organization that cover things you're interested in (dancing, crafting, whatever).
- sizzle 7y ago
  That's my point exactly, relatively speaking you'll never be surrounded by ~30,000 university students who are forced to cohabit the same location in their most formative years. The situation is much different when you have to find a babysitter for your kids to free up what little time you might have each day that is then split between you and your life partner to afford to socialize regularly. I've just internalized this phenomenon as a fact of life after entering mid adulthood and settling down.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Ah, I understand. I was reading more into your statement than I should have. I'm a 50-something man and I often hear others of my general age complain about how hard it is to make friends, but they rarely realize that's something they can actually fix. > The situation is much different when you have to find a babysitter for your kids to free up what little time you might have each day Indeed! That was what taught me the real reason to arrange "playdates". It's not really for the kids, it's so that the adults can socialize with less hassle around babysitters and such. But having children certainly makes lots of things more difficult. Mine are adults now, and I can tell you from experience that once the kids are off to college and beyond, then your social life can come back in its entirety.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  > in school, you're automatically surrounded by a lot of varied people. Out of school, that's not automatic That's exactly OP's point. Not automatic implies not as easy.

by sizzle 7y ago

scrape_it 7y ago

you are not alone and I can definitely relate. 12 years ago FB was such a different place as I remember it. It was thriving and everybody was having a good time on it. I recently joined Facebook again for my small side biz and immediately I get Friend Adds from Korean call girls and weird chinese gambling sites. It's great that a province in India likes my content so much but not exactly a target market. Then I get weird messages from people telling me about their life situation. What's most striking is the seemingly absent moderation, its like sometime in the past 12 years, theres nobody at the driver wheel, that "vacancy" despite the huge number of people on the platform, feels so familiar, literally the exact same vibe I got from MySpace, then it hit me, Facebook has been in MySpace stage for at least a year. In addition, the political image of FB and Mark Cuckerberg has certainly taken a nose dive. I can't believe he still thinks people are going to vote for him. It's arrogance, and the organizations are largely a reflection of its founders, and it shows. Tl;dr: joined FB as a small biz, gets immediately spammed, reminded of MySpace.

JohnFen 7y ago

> a simple fact of life that after graduating, it gets harder to make friends as you get older This is not really a simple fact of life, in my opinion. It only gets harder because people make less of an effort. If you put as much time and energy into being social later in life as you do in college, then it isn't any harder to make new friends. The main difference is that in school, you're automatically surrounded by a lot of varied people. Out of school, that's not automatic -- you have to intentionally put yourself in such situation. Often this is done by joining and participating in clubs and organization that cover things you're interested in (dancing, crafting, whatever).

sizzle 7y ago
That's my point exactly, relatively speaking you'll never be surrounded by ~30,000 university students who are forced to cohabit the same location in their most formative years. The situation is much different when you have to find a babysitter for your kids to free up what little time you might have each day that is then split between you and your life partner to afford to socialize regularly. I've just internalized this phenomenon as a fact of life after entering mid adulthood and settling down.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Ah, I understand. I was reading more into your statement than I should have. I'm a 50-something man and I often hear others of my general age complain about how hard it is to make friends, but they rarely realize that's something they can actually fix. > The situation is much different when you have to find a babysitter for your kids to free up what little time you might have each day Indeed! That was what taught me the real reason to arrange "playdates". It's not really for the kids, it's so that the adults can socialize with less hassle around babysitters and such. But having children certainly makes lots of things more difficult. Mine are adults now, and I can tell you from experience that once the kids are off to college and beyond, then your social life can come back in its entirety.
EForEndeavour 7y ago
> in school, you're automatically surrounded by a lot of varied people. Out of school, that's not automatic That's exactly OP's point. Not automatic implies not as easy.