The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => People & Places => Topic started by: Carlos del Vaca on March 14, 2014, 08:43:28 pm
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On the whole we could probably debate whether Facebook is a good or bad thing all freaking day. But in particular, I have had this thought of late: my high school class has a very active page, and about 80% of what's posted there is prayer requests. We're of a certain age where our parents are dying, and some of us are having health problems of our own. So seemingly every day it's "Please pray for Lurleen, whose mother is in the ICU and may not make it," or "Please pray for Leanne, whose husband was just diagnosed with liver cancer." It's depressing as all get out.
(The prayer thing is its own issue. Not to open a religious can o' worms, but that strikes me as something that lets people feel like they're doing something in a situation where the obviously can't help in any way.)
For my closest friends, I would definitely want to know what's up with them and their families. But for a great many of these high school people, I can't help but wonder if the psychological burden I get from knowing everyone's misfortunes is worth it. I don't get much out of "connecting" with them, certainly not on a day to day basis. And my knowing that Leanne's husband has liver cancer doesn't do me any good, doesn't do them any good really, so why go there?
Is that heartless of me? Perhaps. But there is plenty of sadness in this world and it can pull you down if you spend too much time thinking about it.
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I don't get so much of this with people, but with pets. There are always dogs dying that I only know on the internet. Only knowing them on the internet doesn't make it any less sad - and now that I know dogs on the internet I know so many more dogs than a person would know in real life. So there's that much more heartbreak. It's like, we are just not designed to be constantly in touch with that much heartbreak.
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This is the one thing about Facebook that it is actually useful for. I'm all for people relating things from their actual lives. They can do that all day long and I'll be happy with Facebook. And it's not always sad. We learn lots of good stuff about our friends too. And there are plenty of people who don't like that either so there's just no way to win. But anything that is real is okay fine with me. I'd rather hear about your sick aunt Lurleen than what _____ character you are.
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Yeah, maybe I'm too cynical. I should appreciate people's photos of their feet poolside, cute things their kids did, and discussions of lunch more, but it doesn't take long for that stuff to run together and all sound the same.
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I'm sure you do, but in general the pugs have more fans than I do.
Which reminds me of another thing - you know that people who are not on social media mock it as being about people posting pictures of their lunch. But it's an extremely reliable generalizations that if I want to get a lot of likes and comments on a Facebook post, I should post something about food. People like to talk about it.
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I'm sure you do, but in general the pugs have more fans than I do.
Which reminds me of another thing - you know that people who are not on social media mock it as being about people posting pictures of their lunch. But it's an extremely reliable generalizations that if I want to get a lot of likes and comments on a Facebook post, I should post something about food. People like to talk about it.
The more vague you are the more people will be able to project themselves onto whatever. That's why I think pictures of food and pets are so popular. You or I might see a post like 'I had cereal for breakfast' of 'look at my pug' and think 'who fuck*ng cares,' but the post will have 20 comments and not one of them will have anything to do with our friend, it's all about the food or dog. Or maybe it's because food and pets are safe topics. It's easy to talk about those things without starting a fight.
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I still read Urban Planning blogs, but all the social justice/leftist blogs had to get deleted from my bookmarks because dealing with that many angry/sad people was making me an unhappy person. I am glad that those people are doing those things, but reading about them all day every day was really messing me up.
On facebook I have pretty much blocked everyone from showing on my feed. You guys show up. My roommates and former roommates. That is about it.
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I just deleted a friend who posted an article about some hossshit about Indians losing their ability to track because the military made them cut their hair. Actually I only deleted them after they defended the article after I called it bullshit. Later dumbass, I don't need that shit.
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I had an aboriginal coworker circulate that story via email at our aboriginal agency via an agency wide email, followed by a few "reply all" from coworkers thanking him for sharing it. I was filled with Snopesy rage mixed with utter embarrassment for each of the otherwise intelligent people who bought in. At first I was ready to send out a response dispelling the bullshit, but then I sank into a sort of depression about it. We are still a colonized people. Sigh.
As for FB for good or evil, it has been an important tool for keeping me sane as a new mom. There's a lot of good stuff. I don't tend to get the crap stuff, probably because I don't friend people who are not my friends, and I don't make friends with idiots.
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otherwise intelligent people
I think this is a key phrase. Most of my friends who are idiots on Facebook are otherwise intelligent people.
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I just found a reason to eliminate 2 more people from my Facebook feed. I love days like today.
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I preemptively unfollowed 90% of my feed and never looked back.
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I've gotten almost all of the right wingers and their insane opinions. Now I am working on the lefties who lack a sense of humor. I still have a large contingency of hippies and their feel good nonsense to deal with.
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My Facebook thing this week is that someone posted photos of a mutual friend's wedding so now I have to decide whether to be insulted that I wasn't invited. I actually hate going to weddings, but I think I would have gone to this one. I additionally annoyed myself by poking around in the comments of the photos and discovered a couple of people were invited that we'd both worked with who I hadn't seen in years that I would have liked to talk to. On the other hand, probably I'd have caught up with each of them in five minutes and weddings last longer than ten minutes so I'd have spent the rest of the time feeling awkward and unsociable and out of place and remembering why I hate weddings.
I knew she was getting married, but if I hadn't seen these photos, I'd have assumed that someone who was getting married for the first time in her 50s had decided to have a small private ceremony. And we don't have any mutual friends that I ever see in real life anymore so I would probably have never known otherwise. So if it wasn't for Facebook I wouldn't have wasted all this mental energy.
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Part of me feels like Facebook isn't to blame. Shouldn't a person grow out of thinking that way even when presented with a situation like this?
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I just wish more social media services had the "unfollow but don't de-friend" option. There are lots of friends that it feels rude to unfollow on Instagram or twitter, but like, I don't need to see any more pictures of my cousin kissing her boyfriend or wearing booty shorts.
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And now my Facebook thing is that I am feeling like I want to unfollow all the writers I know who are more successful than I am. That would be stupid because a big part of the point I joined Facebook was to network with sources and other writers. I am trying to hang on till Spring till it stops being cold and snowing and I have one less thing to be depressed about and maybe they won't bother me as much.
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I capped my Facebook friends list at 150 because I read years ago that that is the maximum number of people, more or less, that most people can keep track of at once. I used to delete someone every time I added someone new, but I lifted the cap recently because I just didn't feel like dealing with sifting through and choosing people to drop. I'm at 176 now and that's too many, I might go ahead and drop the people I knew in middle school but haven't talked to since. I don't have any other way to get in touch with them, but...I can't figure out why I'd want to at this point.
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OK, how about if I don't take all the more successful writers out of my Facebook feed, but I unfollow on Twitter the two writers who only ever tweet when they have something to promote. That's fair, right?
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What happened yesterday is why I unfollow, but not unfriend people on Facebook. Called a friend who I hadn't spoken with in a long time and his number had changed. So I went to Facebook, looked him up and sent him a message. He called me back about 2 hours later.
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When you hide a FB post in your feed, you can optionally follow up with "Why don't you want to see this?" Unfortunately, "It is dumb" is not one of the answers.
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Dumb probably comes under the "annoying or offensive" subheading.
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Thought of reasons to unfollow 2 of my friends on Facebook. I love days like today.
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I'm not El Guapo. Having said that, I'd toss the whole lot of 'em to the curb if there were more action here.
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Oh man, I wish I hadn't friended my mother in law, because now I can't complain about her passive aggressive bullshit on FB. So I'll do that here.
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For Paul and all...
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/facebook_cleanse_unfriend_strangers_on_their_birthdays.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/facebook_cleanse_unfriend_strangers_on_their_birthdays.html)
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I've done something similar to that. I don't unfriend, I unfollow, but it creates the same effect. That is, I don't see their post, which is really what I want. Basically, when I encounter a post I don't like I evaluate the person. Sometimes I look at their wall to see if bad posting is their stock in trade or is this a one time bad posting. I'm quick to give the ax to political posters, be they from the right or the left. I'm more tolerant of the religious posters, but some of the dippy hippies had to go. People that never post anything original get gone fast. Most of the people that post about sports are also political posters so I killed two birds with one stone there. My quickest unfollow trigger is for the dummies. But most of them fall into one the other categories. In other words, I'm likely to unfollow you if you mainly post political stuff, unless it's presented in an intelligent manner. I actually have a few friends like that. The rest had to go. I won't unfollow anyone that post mostly personal stuff, even the ones that post a constant barrage of newborn pics. That is unless they are obnoxious about telling me how adorable their little spawn is. I've two married friends, married to each other and I had to unfollow one of them because between the two of them it was a flood of baby pics and smarm. I unfollowed her by the way because, well, quite frankly she was the worst offender, but also because she is super good looking and he, in addition to the baby pics were often pics of her. So it's a trade off. Ha ha... I've unfollowed anywhere from a 1/3 to half of my contacts and Facebook is a much more hospitable place.
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Yeah, who is that dude?
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Dear Facebook: no, a wall post from someone I don't know to one of my peripheral high school friends about a dog throwing up is not something I want to see. What the FUCK is wrong with you.
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Speaking of Facebook for good or ill, there was some drams on my Fecesbook today. Hey, that was a typo, but I think I just created something here. Anyway I got accused of stealing a photograph. I yi yi... I had to unfriend them. It's all still there on my wall if you want to check out the wreckage.
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That sucks Paul. She seems drunk?