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Facebook is bad for you: Get a life

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Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life

#4
Well that's funny, considering that I constantly meet cool people in person and then add them on Facebook to keep in touch.

The constant "Facebook is evil" makes no sense to me, as it's the easiest way to keep in touch with a wide variety of people around the world. If I deleted my Facebook, I'd lose touch with dozens of people worldwide. Could I email them? Sure, but that's broken and impersonal.

Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life

#5
Am I the only one who feels the same in technical forums or even in Hacker News?

Of course people will talk about things they know (and I come here to see these), but I can't help but have a feeling that I don't know enough, or that I can't keep with the technology and knowledge. Or worse: that I can't even get a good grasp of established tech, or that I am not smart enough.

At deeper levels, this probably relate to the "impostor syndrome"[1], as we compare our whole knowledge to a curated selection of every other person knownledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life

#6

Well that's funny, considering that I constantly meet cool people in person and then add them on Facebook to keep in touch. The constant "Facebook is evil" makes no sense to me, as it's the easiest way to keep in touch with a wide variety of people around the world. If I deleted my Facebook, I'd lose touch with dozens of people worldwide. Could I email them? Sure, but that's broken and impersonal.

I think the problem relies on getting curated updates of other people's lives through Facebook.

It gives a very biased impression on how life should be.

Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life

#7

Well that's funny, considering that I constantly meet cool people in person and then add them on Facebook to keep in touch. The constant "Facebook is evil" makes no sense to me, as it's the easiest way to keep in touch with a wide variety of people around the world. If I deleted my Facebook, I'd lose touch with dozens of people worldwide. Could I email them? Sure, but that's broken and impersonal.

Could I email them? Sure, but that's broken and impersonal.

How much more personal can you get than one person writing a message specifically to one other person?

Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life

#8
I don't have a facebook account, and I find the idea of using it for keeping in touch with past acquaintances not very alluring and frankly a diatribe.

You're not supposed to focus so much on other people's lives. Instead of people growing into better people through self defined improvement, people now seek gratification through others and their acknowledgment. Instead of going to a concert with a few choice friends and living in the experience, some just anxiously try to record the moment, which has ironically been lost with the vision of the future.

Don't ask me what the optimum amount of social contact and level is for a person, but suffice to say what people are currently doing is not it.

Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life

#9
post #3

Dr. Stallman also reminds us that Facebook is bad. It doesn't respect the users and their freedom against mass surveillance. http://stallman.org/facebook.html

Stallman's criticisms are accurate, but irrelevant. Real people tend to like and want the service that Facebook offers (frictionless connection to loved ones), and they deliver. Any anti-Facebook sentiment from the FOSS community that is not an attempt to create a free and humane disruption is merely wasted breath (or worse, an in-group shibboleth).
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