my month without facebook

[mythomanic]

I am completely baffled by new Facebook layout. I think about the way I use Facebook: as a reference. If I want to find my (real-life) friend's birthday or phone number, it's there. I like reading people's status updates - this aggregator is what made the Livejournal model so successful. It used to help me keep in touch with what my friends were

Comments

[magus145]

I'm totally pissed that birthdays are much harder to navigate, especially recently passed ones. I also use Facebook mainly as reference. But denigrating messages because they are sent through Facebook while chastising people for not remembering e-mail addresses rings hollow and reactionary, like parents protesting on why should one use e-mail when there's a perfectly good telephone or grandparents with letter-writing. You're basically asking I use Outlook or Gmail instead of Facebook to organize and store my contacts. Either way, I'm not memorizing the addresses, just like I don't memorize the numbers in my cell phone. I understand the complaint that with each new form of communication, the quality of that communications lessens, but the blame rests with lazy authors, not the medium. And since you log off Facebook and direct us to Twitter, it seems you agree.

P.S. I miss you!

[mythomanic]

I don't memorise people's email addresses or phone numbers either, and that was a throwaway remark in context with the rest of the entry, and you know it. While Facebook mailboxes are convenient, you've got to agree that the email functionality is clearly not up to scratch. But that's a minor point.

Frankly, I think the quality of the communication is just fine, and to hell with the so-called social dysfunction/ degeneration of 'traditional' modes of communication that adults complain about. That's not actually my complaint. My complaint is that Facebook - like many multi-app devices - is bloated with functions I don't need and won't use, and worse, it doesn't stop to actually ask users how they want to use these widgets.

That may not be the view of early adopters, but it is how I use it, and I'm someone who's sort of in the middle of the tech-adoption curve. Ms. Average User, say.

And that's why I'm back here and on Twitter. Each of those has just a couple of functions - which I can control and use.

[magus145]

Then we are in total agreement! Hooray!

[mythomanic]

Hooray! P.S. I miss you too.

P.P.S. Are quals over yet? Good luck!

[doogly]

updates will be here and on twitter at @gracechua.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[mattyofg]

Yeah, I was amused that you are abandoning facebook, but moving directly to twitter and lj. :P

[mythomanic]

But a fire I can control the temperature of. ;) I'm amused that this post has drawn you guys out of the LJ woodwork and into an actual conversation with me.

(Stop lurking, Dan.)

[doogly]

It is because I am happy to see more LJ, but I omniloathe twitter.

[ducttapedemigod]

I'm tired of the other rubbish that comes with the useful stuff. Like the invites to events that are on the wrong side of the world, the causes invitations that allow you to signal support but nobody wants to donate to, and the games where you slay fish, cook Mafia and collect zoo animals.

rebuttal: the extent of farmville and castle age updates on your news feed is less the fault of facebook and more the result of the facebook friends you keep (though i haven't taken any drastic measures to de-friend the obsessive farmville residents, yet). granted, facebook allows this bombardment of rubbish apps, but they're not feeding you anything your friends aren't doing.

i've debated on a departure from facebook due to social drama a couple times (and, man, not being facebook friends with a significant other is actually a pretty sweet thing), but i appreciate the photo upload app and my visual bookshelf enough to keep my profile for now. i use it as sort of a media diary of the links and videos i think are good enough to share...and facebook

[mythomanic]

Simply getting rid of the facebook website works for me, but I'm not terribly visual - you like the photo uploads, so you'll have to find another way to declutter :) Some folks I know have done other - perhaps more drastic! - things, like paring down their facebook friends list and apps.

The one facebook game I appreciate is Zoo World...teaching kids about biodiversity since 2009. Lemurs, sloths and rare Ecuadorian frogs, o my!

[ducttapedemigod]

while i have made a strict vow never to fall into the evil grasps of a facebook game, i have to say it's so hard seeing those little animals in the ads that "need my help in ZooWorld". if i were a weaker person (actually, perhaps just if i had more downtime i needed to fill), i may have started playing that one.

[metallian]

FWIW - You can screen out the games (and possibly other apps...I haven't bothered to try) so they won't show up on your feed. I certainly have, I can't imagine why I'd want to read such things.

tweet

[lucidfiction]

I can't find you on twitter! is it still gracechua? want to add you.

I love the poems you post on breathe poetry, and i'd like to see more of your own as well