4 ms·

It doesn't take a lot of effort to maintain contact with people that are important in our life today. The relationships that are important to us need to be nur

by dade_ 11y ago

It doesn't take a lot of effort to maintain contact with people that are important in our life today. The relationships that are important to us need to be nurtured, not followed. Facebook has created this (inadvertent) anti-social follow use case, and I think a lot of people have fallen into it.

logan5 11y ago
Exactly. And if you keep seeing similar posts on a regular basis from the same set of people (close or distant), it gets repetitive and boring. How often do you need to know that x is doing y?
smackfu 11y ago
Eh, I remember the days of trying to keep in touch via email, and not getting replies, or feeling bad that I wasn't sending a reply. Just to keep in general contact, with no specific goal in mind. I don't look forward to going back to them.
- mariodiana 11y ago
  Facebook has become something of a "Third Place," in this respect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
- ekianjo 11y ago
  if people don't reply to your emails, maybe that says a lot about how much they care about you.
  - smackfu 11y ago
    Exactly? I'm talking about a situation where we both care exactly at a "casual Facebook friend" level. Like we would meet up if we were in the same town at the same time, but we aren't writing emails back and forth about what has happened lately. And that is great, IMHO.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Or maybe it says nothing about that -- but more about their email patterns, work stress, guilt, etc.
tbomb 11y ago
Any of my more "important" relationships are maintained via frequent text messages and less frequent phone calls. For me, Facebook is rarely used for keeping in touch and mostly for its group features. Otherwise its just old acquaintances from yesteryear who'd I don't necessarily care to keep up with anyway. In fact, if it wasn't so painstakingly tedious to delete large numbers of "friends" on there i'd probably only have about 50.

by dade_ 11y ago

logan5 11y ago

Exactly. And if you keep seeing similar posts on a regular basis from the same set of people (close or distant), it gets repetitive and boring. How often do you need to know that x is doing y?

smackfu 11y ago

Eh, I remember the days of trying to keep in touch via email, and not getting replies, or feeling bad that I wasn't sending a reply. Just to keep in general contact, with no specific goal in mind. I don't look forward to going back to them.

mariodiana 11y ago
Facebook has become something of a "Third Place," in this respect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
ekianjo 11y ago
if people don't reply to your emails, maybe that says a lot about how much they care about you.
- smackfu 11y ago
  Exactly? I'm talking about a situation where we both care exactly at a "casual Facebook friend" level. Like we would meet up if we were in the same town at the same time, but we aren't writing emails back and forth about what has happened lately. And that is great, IMHO.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 11y ago
  Or maybe it says nothing about that -- but more about their email patterns, work stress, guilt, etc.

tbomb 11y ago

Any of my more "important" relationships are maintained via frequent text messages and less frequent phone calls. For me, Facebook is rarely used for keeping in touch and mostly for its group features. Otherwise its just old acquaintances from yesteryear who'd I don't necessarily care to keep up with anyway. In fact, if it wasn't so painstakingly tedious to delete large numbers of "friends" on there i'd probably only have about 50.