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Facebook is for Muggles

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Posts

  • UltimanecatUltimanecat Registered User regular
    See, I don't get this. Yeah, I know and accept that people fall in and out of touch. I grew up pre-internet, so I'm aware of how things used to be. Technology has advanced though. You can now keep in easy, non-committal touch with your friends. The old way wasn't better. It was just the limitations of reality and technology.

    I didn't make a value judgment about keeping in touch, because it means a good deal to some people but not to me. Ultimately, for me personally, keeping in touch in a non-committal fashion is really not much better than not keeping tabs at all. I'm probably a bad person but my ability to care about people beyond the same generalized manner that I care about a person I see on the news starts stretching thin if I haven't interacted with them personally for years.

    Might not be that way to you or most people, so it's really on me to adjust.

    SteamID : same as my PA forum name
  • Skoal CatSkoal Cat Registered User regular
    Its a lot easier to find a couch to crash on in a random city now?

  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I've come to an understanding with Facebook; I don't sweat adding most acquaintances, work associates or family to it, and rarely bother with anything but fairly innocuous or (in my eyes) funny but reasonably tame status stuff. Got into some of the games, added a pile of people accordingly, got tired of said games' bullshit and axed everyone that had been added for that reason.

    Trimmed a few far flung people (and ponder doing so again soon) and went on a Hide'ing spree that cleaned up the most common spammers (mostly games to start, then just started blocking people entirely who seemed to have no filter between their brains and their status updates).

    Sometimes I ponder pretty much emptying my list of everyone but good friends and immediate family, but I mostly can't be bothered.

    Forar on
    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
  • Mike DangerMike Danger "Diane..." a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered User regular
    Skoal Cat wrote:
    I really wish I understood better how Facebook determines what updates you see in your news feed.

    So does everyone, from what I understand. There was a change to how the newsfeed works at some point that made it very erratic.

    Steam: Mike Danger | PSN/NNID: remadeking | 3DS: 2079-9204-4075
    oE0mva1.jpg
  • GreasyKidsStuffGreasyKidsStuff MOMMM! ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered User regular
    I used to have so many people on Facebook and posted so much stuff. Like, multiple status updates a day. And my friends list was pretty bloated and included a lot of people that I met approx. 1 time at some party, that kind of stuff. But now that I have some close friends on Twitter I just post most of my musings about the day on there instead. Facebook gets attention still, I go on it religiously. But I also realized I had a lot of people that I gave zero shits about so I just deleted a lot of them.

    I also deleted this girl who I almost had a fling with and then she flipped shit at me, whoooops. If you're getting mad at people deleting you from Facebook when you never talk to them in years, you need to re-evaluate things.

  • Skoal CatSkoal Cat Registered User regular
    Skoal Cat wrote:
    I really wish I understood better how Facebook determines what updates you see in your news feed.

    So does everyone, from what I understand. There was a change to how the newsfeed works at some point that made it very erratic.

    I made 100 numbered posts to my wall and asked people to tell me what they saw. Some got all of them, some got "random" ones out of order, some got "random" ones in order, some got none, and one guy got different updates in different browsers.
    It was eye opening and hysterical.

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Skoal Cat wrote:
    I really wish I understood better how Facebook determines what updates you see in your news feed.

    "Top News" is some black magic bullshit, so I turn it off and go straight to "Most Recent" when I log in.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • GreasyKidsStuffGreasyKidsStuff MOMMM! ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered User regular
    Yeah, "most recent" is the way to go for the news feed.

    Know what's absolute shit? The Facebook app for iPhone. I'm not sure if it's just the connection wherever I am but it is absolutely fucked. Rarely loads properly/quickly, erratic, etc etc. But again, I might just be a minority case.

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    See, I don't get this. Yeah, I know and accept that people fall in and out of touch. I grew up pre-internet, so I'm aware of how things used to be. Technology has advanced though. You can now keep in easy, non-committal touch with your friends. The old way wasn't better. It was just the limitations of reality and technology.

    I didn't make a value judgment about keeping in touch, because it means a good deal to some people but not to me. Ultimately, for me personally, keeping in touch in a non-committal fashion is really not much better than not keeping tabs at all. I'm probably a bad person but my ability to care about people beyond the same generalized manner that I care about a person I see on the news starts stretching thin if I haven't interacted with them personally for years.

    Might not be that way to you or most people, so it's really on me to adjust.

    On its face, the logic, "Why do I need to regain contact with somebody who I haven't interacted with in years" seems legitimate... but what I have found is that the circumstances that might have led me astray from a former acquaintance might be largely irrelevant to their value to me as a person. Maybe they went to a far-away college, or maybe they got involved in a relationship with somebody controlling for a little while, or the only job they could find in their field was on the other side of the country, or maybe I was just busy and our schedules never synced. I find it enriching to discover, for instance, that the elementary school friend I lost touch with when we went to different middle schools now not only lives in my area, but has the same political leanings as I do. I never talked to my ex-coworker about music at all in the office, but now that she's on Facebook, I see that we have overlapping tastes. The friend-of-a-friend who I thought was an arrogant douchebag in person has mellowed out after grad school and now posts really interesting philosophy articles. Meanwhile other friends have grown apart from me - not because they moved away, but because their outlooks on life have shifted and are no longer particularly compatible with mine.

    The "non-committal" nature of Facebook interaction doesn't mean it's flaky, to me, but it does mean that it is based more on shared values and interests than it is on random geographical circumstance.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • UltimanecatUltimanecat Registered User regular
    Feral wrote:
    The "non-committal" nature of Facebook interaction doesn't mean it's flaky, to me, but it does mean that it is based more on shared values and interests than it is on random geographical circumstance.

    But that does rely on others maintaining their online persona - sharing likes, dislikes, links, and pithy remarks. You have to buy into (psychologically) Facebook's extended features beyond it being a gussied-up address book for that to work.

    I'm not some luddite Bill O'Reilly type that laments the iPod generation - but seriously, I prefer face-to-face contact. If for whatever reason I don't or can't interact with another person enough to discover that they are similar to me, then it is a bit of a shame, but in much the same way as I don't think of all the lost lovers I could have had if I only said the right thing to the right girl at the right time, I don't miss friends I never actually had.

    Still, I don't begrudge others to meet friends and maintain relationships on Facebook. I'll just be one of the annoying ones that you have to call or email or whatever to keep in the loop.

    SteamID : same as my PA forum name
  • BamaBama Registered User regular
    Modern Man wrote:
    ^^^ I agree, I liked Facebook before it was cool.
    Organichu wrote:
    What? What are muggles, in this context? Are you... are you using 'muggles' to mean 'normies', like non-nerds?

    People with social lives and friends who don't find it weird that people they once went to high school with don't harbor resentment or feelings of ill will and thus would like to keep you as an acquaintance.
    It's nice to be able to find out what happened to that guy you were friends with back in high school. I don't really see the harm in making it easier for people to keep in touch with people from their past.
    There was a guy I had a few classes with in middle school who I got along with pretty well. He was awkward, kinda funny looking, and got picked on quite a bit.

    I lost track of him when we went on to high school and pretty much forgot he existed until I ran across him on facebook through mutual friends of mutual friends or somesuch. He moved away, seems to have an excellent life, and became quite a handsome man.

    That discovery made me stupid happy for a day or two and still brings a smile to my face when I think of it. It's also something I never would have known without social media because none of the schoomates I'm still in close contact with knew about it until I told them.

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