Coming back from facebook
I resisted using facebook for a long time, but so many of my friends were using it that I decided to give it a go. The really addicting and cool thing about it is that "everybody" seems to be on it, and I've gotten back in touch with several old friends that I haven't seen in decades. It's posting character limit is designed for quick posts, which removes any pressure to post only things of substance. You just don't feel stupid for posting simple one-liners.
But there is no substance there. All those advantages are also big disadvantages. If you want to post anything of substance, you have to add a comment to your own original post. But as soon as a couple other people comment, your first comments disappear off the default view of the wall.
Most of those old friends have grown differently than I have, with wide ranging values. I don't really want the drama of posting anything that might be controversial to any of those old friends. The point is to be in contact with them.
Speaking of "friends", what is it about all these people coming out of the woodwork with friend requests, and no message telling me who they are and why they want to friend me, or why I would want to friend them back? Some guy whose name sounds kinda familiar, and lives near my old hometown, has sent two requests with "Hi David" as the message, and nothing more, even after a message back to him with "Who are you?" after the first attempt. I don't feel any sense of loss, since his wall is full of right wing nutjob posts about Sarah Palin and Glen Beck.
Then there's the well covered problems with how bad facebook's user interface and privacy records are.
There is an upcoming protest day on May 31 to delete your facebook account, but I'm not going to participate in that. What I am going to do is greatly reduce my posting over there to the quick one-liners that it is good for. I'll use it to stay in contact with friends, and avoid friending anyone that I simply don't want to be back in touch with.
I'm going to go back to blogging on my own website for any general interest stuff. My cooking and recipes posts will go on my recipe website, and my gardening posts will go on a new gardening website.
As for LJ, this is where I'm going to start posting more friends-only stuff. Even though I know few of you in real life, my LJ friends more closely match my current values than the wide variety of RL friends that I link to on FB.
I will also be posting public copies of some of the posts to my other websites, or links to them, and I'll do the same on facebook.
So, I'm back now.
But there is no substance there. All those advantages are also big disadvantages. If you want to post anything of substance, you have to add a comment to your own original post. But as soon as a couple other people comment, your first comments disappear off the default view of the wall.
Most of those old friends have grown differently than I have, with wide ranging values. I don't really want the drama of posting anything that might be controversial to any of those old friends. The point is to be in contact with them.
Speaking of "friends", what is it about all these people coming out of the woodwork with friend requests, and no message telling me who they are and why they want to friend me, or why I would want to friend them back? Some guy whose name sounds kinda familiar, and lives near my old hometown, has sent two requests with "Hi David" as the message, and nothing more, even after a message back to him with "Who are you?" after the first attempt. I don't feel any sense of loss, since his wall is full of right wing nutjob posts about Sarah Palin and Glen Beck.
Then there's the well covered problems with how bad facebook's user interface and privacy records are.
There is an upcoming protest day on May 31 to delete your facebook account, but I'm not going to participate in that. What I am going to do is greatly reduce my posting over there to the quick one-liners that it is good for. I'll use it to stay in contact with friends, and avoid friending anyone that I simply don't want to be back in touch with.
I'm going to go back to blogging on my own website for any general interest stuff. My cooking and recipes posts will go on my recipe website, and my gardening posts will go on a new gardening website.
As for LJ, this is where I'm going to start posting more friends-only stuff. Even though I know few of you in real life, my LJ friends more closely match my current values than the wide variety of RL friends that I link to on FB.
I will also be posting public copies of some of the posts to my other websites, or links to them, and I'll do the same on facebook.
So, I'm back now.