10 ms·

I don't have a facebook account, and I find the idea of using it for keeping in touch with past acquaintances not very alluring and frankly a diatribe. You're

I don't have a facebook account, and I find the idea of using it for keeping in touch with past acquaintances not very alluring and frankly a diatribe. You're not supposed to focus so much on other people's lives. Instead of people growing into better people through self defined improvement, people now seek gratification through others and their acknowledgment. Instead of going to a concert with a few choice friends and living in the experience, some just anxiously try to record the moment, which has ironically been lost with the vision of the future. Don't ask me what the optimum amount of social contact and level is for a person, but suffice to say what people are currently doing is not it.

andrewljohnson 13y ago
It always surprises me how people are eager to project the foibles of people of all eras, onto modern technology. Suffice it to say that the right amount of social contact a person wants varies, and finding your place free of loneliness in society has been a challenge since well before Facebook.
- tokenizer 13y ago
  I don't think so. Modern technology allows instant gratification for social contracts from anywhere in the world. It makes us more dependent on each other, and it also allows for long term storage when you then put this in junction with recording devices. You're right that people have also been widely varied in their preferences with social contact, but for lack of a better argument than an appeal to nature, this is different, and we don't know what the consequences are. At least the older ways of contacting people were time tested before the phone.
agumonkey 13y ago
"""living in the experience, some just anxiously try to record the moment, which has ironically been lost with the vision of the future""" Louis CK illustrated something close : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAwhSSe7F0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAwhSSe7F0
- smsm42 13y ago
  That's why I practically stopped taking photos on vacations. I discovered I am replacing actual experiences with attempt to record the experience for some future myself, thus sacrificing my present enjoyment for the shadow of future recollection of the enjoyment that I didn't actually have because I was too busy trying to record it.
  - agumonkey 13y ago
    Yeah, a bad analogy would be throwing a party vs being invited. All in all it feels very weird how this 'data' era is twisting our conception of 'existing'. It seems like a gigantic ball of noise, no signal. Too much content of lowered moments. Very unsettling. Slightly digressing, I'm also having a non-digital reaction. I used to love the unaltered quality of digital data versus fragile analogical mediums. But now I'm far more interested by used objects. We used to see them as flawed or tainted, and with the experience of perfect digital duplicates, I sense a loss of memory (no pun intended). Our perfect bits have no past, no history. An old photo I sense the effect of time. A book with notes on the margin. What was negative has positive value now. And reflecting on how I felt reassured about digital before, I'd say it was an immature fear, a paranoid need to keep things "perfect". Which goes back to what the previous post said, instead of stressing over saving something, enjoy it fully and let it live or die.
    - quantumpotato_ 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
      - agumonkey 13y ago
        I wish you'd say a little more but thank you anyway I forgot that book existed, now I have a stronger desire to read it.
    - qu4z-2 13y ago
      I don't know if this is up your alley, but have you looked into the aesthetic called 'wabi-sabi'?
blah32497 13y ago
I didn't have a facebook account for a very long time, and now I do and I realized I had no idea what I was talking about. Yes, old acquaintances posting about minutia of there lives is of no value and can be down right irritating. But the single most important function facebook provides is it turns acquaintances into friends. You can add people on Facebook that you've only meet once or twice before. You don't need to awkwardly ask for someone number or email or on the spot make future plans to meet up. You just look them up and you're instantly connected to them. You may learn they have a hobby in common with you or that they have an event that you're welcome to come to, and through the connection provided by Facebook you can strengthen your relations with people you find interesting. For my real friends that I keep in touch with regularly facebook is more or less irrelevant - in fact most aren't even on my facebook. It's a nice platform to upload your photos to I guess, but honestly emailing a dropbox link is kinda nicer tbh.
- junto 13y ago
  I'm similar to you. I had an account for a long time, then "deleted it" a couple of months ago. My entire problem with Facebook has been based around invasions to my privacy. As the years went on, I realised that more and more of my privacy was being eroded. I realised that Facebook really didn't care. I realised that I was helping them to build one big database that was searchable and rampant for abuse by a rogue government agency. My quitting of Facebook meant nothing really. They already had all of my data, and primarily, my contacts and a profile picture. The "deletion" of my account just meant they switched my account status from "active" to "deactivated" to "deleted". I'm not naieve enough to believe that they really deleted all that info. I proved several times to the contrary previously through minor Facebook bugs. At the end of the day, Facebook is company that over time more and more people won't trust. The demographics are already changing and ageing. The key thing I have taken away from deleting my account t is much like yourself. I realised that I don't actually miss it. The people I was friends with on Facebook weren't my day to day friends. To be perfectly honest I don't have many. Everyone on Facebook that I knew were exes. Ex work colleagues, ex girlfriends, ex friends. If they want to keep in touch then they can find other ways to contact me. Maybe we can meet up and have a face-to-face, away from the prying eyes and ears of the snooping governments that we all live under in 2013. One final thing. I will discourage my kids from having Facebook accounts. I hope I can teach them about their privacy, such that they don't want one in the first place.
dsuth 13y ago
That is not the only use for Facebook, although sadly I think a lot of people view it that way. Social media is a great way to find out about new things which have been vetted by your social network, meaning you're much more likely to enjoy them. It's like a curated stream of Things of Potential Interest that you can peruse at your leisure. The social interaction side of things can be very positive when you feel like there is an active community around the things you're doing, and hell, there's nothing wrong with getting Internet High Fives when you post a good run time or achievement.
- Theodores 13y ago
  I think the opposite is true. Girlfriend uses Facebook (I do not). When she says 'got to see this...' I ask if it is on Facebook, and, if so, decline being interrupted to look at whatever it is. As for 'this is really funny!' my response 'is this another Facebook joke?' is how I am able to filter out the lame humour - if it is on Facebook it is rubbish humour, simple as.
  - dsuth 13y ago
    To you, perhaps, but I suspect your social circle and group/interest pages would be significantly different to your girlfriends.

andrewljohnson 13y ago

It always surprises me how people are eager to project the foibles of people of all eras, onto modern technology. Suffice it to say that the right amount of social contact a person wants varies, and finding your place free of loneliness in society has been a challenge since well before Facebook.

tokenizer 13y ago
I don't think so. Modern technology allows instant gratification for social contracts from anywhere in the world. It makes us more dependent on each other, and it also allows for long term storage when you then put this in junction with recording devices. You're right that people have also been widely varied in their preferences with social contact, but for lack of a better argument than an appeal to nature, this is different, and we don't know what the consequences are. At least the older ways of contacting people were time tested before the phone.

agumonkey 13y ago

"""living in the experience, some just anxiously try to record the moment, which has ironically been lost with the vision of the future""" Louis CK illustrated something close : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAwhSSe7F0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAwhSSe7F0

smsm42 13y ago
That's why I practically stopped taking photos on vacations. I discovered I am replacing actual experiences with attempt to record the experience for some future myself, thus sacrificing my present enjoyment for the shadow of future recollection of the enjoyment that I didn't actually have because I was too busy trying to record it.
- agumonkey 13y ago
  Yeah, a bad analogy would be throwing a party vs being invited. All in all it feels very weird how this 'data' era is twisting our conception of 'existing'. It seems like a gigantic ball of noise, no signal. Too much content of lowered moments. Very unsettling. Slightly digressing, I'm also having a non-digital reaction. I used to love the unaltered quality of digital data versus fragile analogical mediums. But now I'm far more interested by used objects. We used to see them as flawed or tainted, and with the experience of perfect digital duplicates, I sense a loss of memory (no pun intended). Our perfect bits have no past, no history. An old photo I sense the effect of time. A book with notes on the margin. What was negative has positive value now. And reflecting on how I felt reassured about digital before, I'd say it was an immature fear, a paranoid need to keep things "perfect". Which goes back to what the previous post said, instead of stressing over saving something, enjoy it fully and let it live or die.
  - quantumpotato_ 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
    - agumonkey 13y ago
      I wish you'd say a little more but thank you anyway I forgot that book existed, now I have a stronger desire to read it.
  - qu4z-2 13y ago
    I don't know if this is up your alley, but have you looked into the aesthetic called 'wabi-sabi'?

blah32497 13y ago

I didn't have a facebook account for a very long time, and now I do and I realized I had no idea what I was talking about. Yes, old acquaintances posting about minutia of there lives is of no value and can be down right irritating. But the single most important function facebook provides is it turns acquaintances into friends. You can add people on Facebook that you've only meet once or twice before. You don't need to awkwardly ask for someone number or email or on the spot make future plans to meet up. You just look them up and you're instantly connected to them. You may learn they have a hobby in common with you or that they have an event that you're welcome to come to, and through the connection provided by Facebook you can strengthen your relations with people you find interesting. For my real friends that I keep in touch with regularly facebook is more or less irrelevant - in fact most aren't even on my facebook. It's a nice platform to upload your photos to I guess, but honestly emailing a dropbox link is kinda nicer tbh.

junto 13y ago
I'm similar to you. I had an account for a long time, then "deleted it" a couple of months ago. My entire problem with Facebook has been based around invasions to my privacy. As the years went on, I realised that more and more of my privacy was being eroded. I realised that Facebook really didn't care. I realised that I was helping them to build one big database that was searchable and rampant for abuse by a rogue government agency. My quitting of Facebook meant nothing really. They already had all of my data, and primarily, my contacts and a profile picture. The "deletion" of my account just meant they switched my account status from "active" to "deactivated" to "deleted". I'm not naieve enough to believe that they really deleted all that info. I proved several times to the contrary previously through minor Facebook bugs. At the end of the day, Facebook is company that over time more and more people won't trust. The demographics are already changing and ageing. The key thing I have taken away from deleting my account t is much like yourself. I realised that I don't actually miss it. The people I was friends with on Facebook weren't my day to day friends. To be perfectly honest I don't have many. Everyone on Facebook that I knew were exes. Ex work colleagues, ex girlfriends, ex friends. If they want to keep in touch then they can find other ways to contact me. Maybe we can meet up and have a face-to-face, away from the prying eyes and ears of the snooping governments that we all live under in 2013. One final thing. I will discourage my kids from having Facebook accounts. I hope I can teach them about their privacy, such that they don't want one in the first place.

dsuth 13y ago

That is not the only use for Facebook, although sadly I think a lot of people view it that way. Social media is a great way to find out about new things which have been vetted by your social network, meaning you're much more likely to enjoy them. It's like a curated stream of Things of Potential Interest that you can peruse at your leisure. The social interaction side of things can be very positive when you feel like there is an active community around the things you're doing, and hell, there's nothing wrong with getting Internet High Fives when you post a good run time or achievement.

Theodores 13y ago
I think the opposite is true. Girlfriend uses Facebook (I do not). When she says 'got to see this...' I ask if it is on Facebook, and, if so, decline being interrupted to look at whatever it is. As for 'this is really funny!' my response 'is this another Facebook joke?' is how I am able to filter out the lame humour - if it is on Facebook it is rubbish humour, simple as.
- dsuth 13y ago
  To you, perhaps, but I suspect your social circle and group/interest pages would be significantly different to your girlfriends.