Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Facebook! Love it or hate it?

This social networking site is, whether you like it or not, a big part of our lives now.

So what do y'all think about it?

I've been tightening my privacy settings ever since last year. I have like 30+ friends lists now.

Just some random musings...

1) I don't get those people who like tragic statuses. I have a friend who "likes" everything - stats like "I'm sick", "Just broke up", and those gory/porn pics that were flooding the site a couple weeks back. Bad taste, mi amigo.

2) I know our pages are all about US, but jeez, some people update theirs too often. I have a friend who posts every time he leaves work, gets home, eats dinner... Hello!

I have another who posts only milestones, but posts them in the most arrogant ways possible. One update was like, "Okay so I don't have a date for this Saturday at my something something event. Who wants to hang out with me and my pretty face?" I am now unsubscribed to his status updates and haven't missed them at all.

I of course love it. I have embraced my faux-celebrity status and share myself with the universe!

Hate

Stuff like this - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/nov/29/facebook-ftc-privacy-settlement - makes me glad not to have an account

I've been on Facebook since 2007. I still write my status reports in the third person, as they were originally intended to be written.

I've been on facebook for quite a while now, I go through phases of loving and hating it.

Right now, I'm loving it.
One thing I am liking quite a bit is that many sites now allow you to sign in and comment using your FB ID. Super convienent (I just added a FB comment widget to my own site!)

Although I rarely post on it, I love Facebook in the sense of it being a giant address book.

True, I might never need to contact that guy from my third grade math class... but, then again, I might!

I love it. I have been able to contact people and reconnect with people that I would never had gotten the chance to otherwise.

I also like the ability to update people with one action, rather than having to try and contact God knows how many people separately.

Most of all, I just like having fun on there...like harassing someone named Matt a lot.

I think this might be something else. I know I have been tempted to "like" a bad status. It almost is just a way to acknowledge that you have seen the status and are thinking about the person. But then I realize it is probably not a good thing to like someone having an auto accident or just got fired.

Facebook really needs to have a "don't like" button.

I love FB overall, but some of my friends are annoying in the manner Ibby cites. My best friend, for example, averages 6 or more updates a day. Any bit he finds vaguely humorous, any restaraunt he goes to, any random sports thing...you name it. I feel like hewould be more appropriate for Twitter (which I'm not on) if he feels he has to constantly be seen and heard. I want to gently tell him to STFU! Oh, the dilemma...

Another friend is such a damn grump and potty mouth on FB. He says, for example, REALLY offensive things about rival sports teams and people who are fans of them.

I don't want to drop either from my friends lists as they are both RL friends/acquaintences. I think there's a way to block them from showing on my news feed instead. I might have to investigate...

You can definitely hide people from your news feed without de-friending them.

Love my facebook.

Facebook and Twitter both offer private citizens all the disadvantages of being a celebrity (total lack of privacy, constant appeals to one's own narcissism and insecurity) with none of the advantages (big bucks, plus personal handlers who'll actively discourage one's masochistic urge to behave like a total ass, just because any attention is better than no attention).

Wasn't attracted to the idea three of four years back, when FB was first becoming a Whole Big Thing, and I'm still not.

mr_cleome, OTOH, loves it. Then again, he's generally a mellow, cheerful sociable person and I'm basically an angst-ridden, cranky hermit, so that kind of makes sense.

One thing I DO appreciate about Facebook is that it makes event organizing much, much easier.

It usually falls to me to organize reunions, so at least I can just send an invite online instead of text messaging people.

True. The problem with "liking" is that it implies approval. When I see a tragic update, I simply post a short note of condolence.

Lardy, IIRC try looking for a button on the right side of those friends' status updates. By clicking "unsubscribe", you can prevent them from showing up on your newsfeed. Of course, you'll never see another update from them at all

And as with Reboot, I have serious issues about the lack of privacy that Facebook has! I liked the old settings, but given that Zuckerberg and co. seem to like changing them without warning...!

One of my co-workers spent a huge part of last Thursday afternoon having a major argument with her sister (via cellphone) over something that happened on Facebook.

Without going into detail, let's just say that it's really, really embarrassing hearing other people air this kind of super-personal stuff in front of me and leave it at that. And I'm not temping in a cube farm where I can make up some errand and walk away when people do this kind of thing. No, I just had to grit my teeth and keep working, even though I desperately wanted to snatch her phone away and hurl it at a wall.

I'm an addict, but I can stop anytime that I want to. really.

Because of moments like what cleome described above, I've started cleaning up my Facebook account. Security glitches make me paranoid!

Here's one good thing about Facebook... It (and MLLASH) got me back to LW.net! So it can't be all bad!

Welcome back, Star Boy.

What's interesting about FB to me is watching people from different spheres of my life interact with one another. Right now, I'm engaging in a rock 'n' roll debate with a member of my writer's group, and one of my childhood friends (whom I haven't seen in over 20 years) has chimed in.

In another recent discussion, rickshaw1 and his wife joined a debate over Christianity between me and an atheist artist friend I occasionally hang out with.

FB: the place where people who would otherwise never meet get to argue with one other.

Where the weak are CAPS Locked into oblivion.

I think that's the internet generally!

And here's to more posts by Star Boy!

Oh, I just do these things I do.

Yes, but on FB, they wouldn't know each other except through me.

Oh, wait . . .

I've been on it since 2004 when it began (as I was college age when it was a college kids only thing), and it's just become a regular part of my life. I exclusively do it from my phone these days--when I'm on the train, in the elevator, in line at the store, etc. Its especially great when I'm traveling for work. I love it for what it is: a way to stay in contact with acquaintances in addition to good friends I'd be in contact with anyway. I can see what's up in their lives, them in mine, and without going through the 'how have you been' intro conversation.

Because I use it from my phone I don't post as much anymore but I read it regularly. The 'like' function is a nice way to acknowledge you've read something without having to force your way into a conversation.

In terms of annoying things, it is what it is. The great misunderstood philosophers are the most amusing though nothing is more annoying to me than 200 Giants fans on Sunday in my neck of the woods. The avid complainers and depressos are so repetitive that I cant help but grin at their over the top complaining. The super-politicos are perhaps the worst of all but I can block them out; sometimes some interesting links come out of that (usually not FB discussions though). But all that is worth it if I can read about a few nice things going on in some peoples lives, send some good thoughts to people genuinely suffering or laugh at the diverse and hilarious humor I see every day.

As for privacy, I'm of the opinion that whatever you post is the property of Zuckerberg and if he wants to sell it to GE or the CIA or North Korea or whatever than I guess we're all fucked but hey, that one is on us. FB owes us nothing on privacy so we can only be masters of our own settings and stay abreast of the changes being made to the site.

And I agree about planning parties--I planned the three best parties I ever heard about let along been too with a huge assist from Facebook.