did the author say something we all didn't already know?
Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
11–20 of 136 posts
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#12Well 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?
Because I have to look up their email (jabberwocky586@yahoo.com) and deliberately send them an email length message. On Facebook, I see their real name, their photo, their about page, and various recent things about their life. If I want to talk to them, I tap the chat bar and say two words.
Email is extremely cold and impersonal compared to Facebook chat. Most "normal" people don't use email outside of business or more specific uses.
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#13I 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…
It always surprises me how people are eager to project the foibles of people of all eras, onto modern technology.
Suffice it to say that the right amount of social contact a person wants varies, and finding your place free of loneliness in society has been a challenge since well before Facebook.
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#14Dr. 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).
Real people
Yes, because Stallman is fictional. I'm fictional. Anyone who isn't on Facebook doesn't count as a person.
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#15I 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…
"""living in the experience, some just anxiously try to record the moment, which has ironically been lost with the vision of the future"""
Louis CK illustrated something close : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAwhSSe7F0
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#16Well 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.
The problem with your world view is that it doesn't take into account any major negative influences.
What if you gained 20 pounds? Or lost your boyfriend to your close friend? What has normally be associated with the family is now associated with the village, and that adds a lot of stress to people's lives.
Another problem is the us versus them that this group has enforces on people like me. I think I'm a pretty cool person, but if we met, I wouldn't have a facebook account to share with you. Would that affect your opinion of me? Maybe not, but I've had people comment negatively to it, and have even read articles proclaiming it affecting people economically due to potential social expectations now set by employers.
To me, it's a destructive force and a tool. A real-time chatting/messaging service that connects to an address list. And a new social experiment leading people down a path of "true" social alienation and narcissism.
I don't doubt that some people can use the tool responsibly, but it also leaves much to be desired for.
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#17Well 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.
The problem with your world view is that it doesn't take into account any major negative influences. What if you gained 20 pounds? Or lost your boyfriend to your close friend? What has normally be associated with the family is now associated with the village, and that adds a lot of stress to people's lives. Another problem is the us versus them that this group has enforces on people like me. I think I'm a pretty cool…
I wouldn't think less if you for not having a Facebook, but i'd probably become less of a good friend to you simply because of logistics.
I (as anyone who had traveled, I'm sure) have a lot of friends on Facebook whom I met on a trip. Maybe we only had a beer and hung out for 3 hours. But since we added each other on Facebook, we're able to keep in touch. I talk to foreign friends via Facebook all the time.
So instead of my buddy in Brazil that I met in NYC, you'd just be some random cool guy I knew once.
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#18Once the taboo of "I saw this person's update on Facebook, but I can't just jump into a conversation with them referencing that update without qualifying it with a: 'I saw your update on Facebook'" then Facebook will begin to advertise itself as timeshifting social interaction. You can "catch up" with your friends without having to actually talk to them. Here's one use case (sorry for anybody seeing me reference this car crash multiple times):
I got in a car crash. If I had Facebook, I could have made a post about it and explained it once. I've explained what happened to 20 people it feels like, all of whom have Facebook. After the first few times of realizing I had basically drafted a script of the accident, I began not going into too much detail with everyone, only for them to ask more questions until I returned to the script. All-in-all though, timeshifting social interaction sounds really bad for everyone, but really good for increasing how much a single person can consume overall (which is again, probably bad for everyone).
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#19I bet the outcome of the study changes over time. Sure, Facebook can be a mean place, like the school playground, but you tune it out (both mentally and with software) over time.
If you look at how national populations react to internet ads over time, behavior changes, and the same goes with Facebook. In the case of ads, people mostly just become desensitized, and I bet the same goes for the bile on Facebook. Not to mention how the website changes over time, in response to measured user behavior.
Re: Facebook is bad for you: Get a life
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Because I have to look up their email (jabberwocky586@yahoo.com) and deliberately send them an email length message. On Facebook, I see their real name, their photo, their about page, and various recent things about their life. If I want to talk to them, I tap the chat bar and say two words. Email is extremely cold and impersonal compared to Facebook chat. Most "normal" people don't use email outside of business or m…
Whereas to me, what you describe sounds fantastically superficial and impersonal, whereas in sending a personal eMail I've had to actually, deliberately think about my interaction with them. I suppose context goes a long way.