iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

there just seem to be those who are free and those who wish they were free.

Judging from everything I've read here on ILX, I have never seriously questioned the wisdom of my refusal to join facebook. Of course, it also helps that I have the personal habits of a hermit.

i would say it's beneficial in maybe finding out what you like about the world? or yourself. we're sorta engineered these days to be "plugged in" twenty four seven and if you don't take a break and just fucking think, everything starts becoming overwhelming.

my anxiety has gone down about 90%, and this is coming from a dude who has almost-seven panic attacks a day. all of this has to do with how your living your life currently though, i can only speak for myself.

but yes, i think it's urgent that anyone else feeling this way takes a break.

i quit fb because it was bumming me out about my miserable life compared to all my happening friends, then i got back on it because i was in desperate straits, and since then i've grown to hate it again but barely have any regular social contact and can hardly countenance giving up on its digital crumbs again, plus what if i'm in desperate straits again, i can hardly plead for help if i haven't been juicing the ol social machine at least somewhat

in the period where i had quit it completely i was still relatively tethered to the interweb but way less so than i had been for a good handful of years. way less anxious about it, etc. - i highly recommend escaping if you can

I'm really enjoying the new-ish trend of people posting "life events" like "Ray and Max have been friends for 10 months" though

― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, August 6, 2015 7:24 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

On the flipside of this, I find the "memories" feature to be deeply sad. "Remember five years ago when you were STILL WASTING YOUR LIFE ON FACEBOOK?"

I just uploaded a huge load of photos from 2003-2009 to Facebook. It was strange.

Like, I was tagging people I haven't had any interaction with in the best part of a decade. In a way it was a cool way to reconnect with friends who'd drifted away, in another it was nostalgic and bittersweet, in other ways I was like 'do I even know this person any more; do they even remember me??'

I would be pretty annoyed and creeped out if someone I hadn't seen in years started tagging me in things. I don't like tagging in general though.

I figured it would be better to do a couple of tags just so they knew they were in the photos. You can always untag or even ask for photos to be taken down. I did mark the album 'old old old old photos'

'just so you know, i'm putting data pertaining to you into the maw of the internet identity monster, no big, go ahead and piddle away your lunch hour trying to undo it if you want, course the pictures stay no matter what'

gave up facebook about 4-5 years ago and my social circle has most definitely shrunk and I feel left out of a lot of things. no regrets though because I felt left out of more when I was on it. I do feel like the future will have some "time machine"-eque social partition between those locked into social media and those with some desire climb their way out of the cave. more surprised that there hasn't been some Luddite revival, but then how would I hear about it?

Facebook seems like a decent way to keep in touch with people, I just kind of hate it as a content provider. But I guess I wasn't thinking that that's what it would become when I signed up in 2006 and added everyone I'd ever met. I don't really care about most of those people, and I definitely don't trust a large portion of them to be interesting or compelling, even the ones whom I like IRL. Most of the time when I log into Facebook, it all seems pretty banal, even (perhaps especially) the political/social/cultural commentary. I prefer Twitter because the rationale I have for following people is that their tweets look interesting and I want to see them in my timeline. I like following people whom I don't know personally but who provide quality content. I know I could curate Facebook to be more like Twitter, by weeding out the boring elementary-school friends, and I probably should, honestly. It just seems exhausting.

ryan:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-58lMv4vkgng/UYrF_NDSZqI/AAAAAAAADFM/zyo-ojzxdCY/w958-h719-no/IMG_20130508_000326.jpg

ha. and sadly I would never notice that because I'd be looking at twitter or whatever. born free, everywhere staring at an iphone.

I miss the days when FB's mobile was so degraded in functionality from the web version that I didn't even bother to try using it when I was away from home.

'just so you know, i'm putting data pertaining to you into the maw of the internet identity monster, no big, go ahead and piddle away your lunch hour trying to undo it if you want, course the pictures stay no matter what'

― j., Friday, August 7, 2015 9:31 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this seems kind of out of whack. i mean maybe you're right in a way. but i mean... a major thing people actually use facebook for is tagging each other in photos? and doing 'throwback' posts of old ones? and sharing memories and so forth? like it is one of the actual kinda legitimate ways of using this dumb website.

but i'm biased of course in that i've also been posting a ton of retrography in the last few days and have a bunch more cued up. i was a big people-photographer back in the day. some people get a kick out of 'em. probably some don't. it's very possible some or many of the people tagged are rolling their eyes or not even noticing. but that could be true of non-retro photos of present-day stuff too. is posting anything at all of friends and good times just feeding the internet identity monster?

yes obv

post only enemies having bad times and you win

photographing people was always a violation, it was just relatively limited in consequences until the photographs started getting dumped into the datasphere

facebork uses your inherent narcissism wrt your life and the lives in your social circle to stop you from considering those consequences and how they affect you versus how they benefit facebork

diddums

it is pretty strange to have never been a fber and there are still hundreds of photos of me on the site w/ ppl commenting and liking away

like me to my face or don't like me at all imo

(imagines processional of people walking up to ogmor, flicking him on the forehead, and screaming "LIKE!")

that just sounds like a totally normal day to me

trending:

plague

dude from a few weeks ago who whined about my non-like FB status posts this doozy today:

"If you comment on a post without liking it you are placing yourself in one of the following categories:

1. I'm here to be contrarian and I don't want to be part of the conversation.

2. I'm here to be antagonistic and I don't want to be part of the conversation.

3. I genuinely disagree with you and I want to start a debate that may change my mind. (Rare as fuck)

4. I just want to say something dickish. I don't like you and I only keep you on fb to remind you of that cause my life is sad as fuck.

5. LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

6. Tagging someone who could be a REAL DICK In this conversation because I'm afraid to be.

7. I just want the notifications of people being any of the above to you or your statement because I hate books."

aaaaaaaaaaaand, done with you

haha if a 'friend' of mine did that i would so troll the fuck out of it

comment to ask what the need for the like is

but don't like it

that guy is having a mental breakdown, right?

xpost lol, thought about it.

he's married, has a house, has his life pretty together, but he's married to one of the most unpleasant shit-talkers I know so it's probably rubbing off on him.

that he can't see the irony of posting "LOOK AT ME!!!" amidst this pretentious diatribe was humorous enough for me.

4. I just want to say something dickish. I don't like you and I only keep you on fb to remind you of that cause my life is sad as fuck.

ha ha I love it that people who spend enough time online to come up with arcane rules about FB likes can still take the "people on the internet have sad lives" attitude

One of my favorite things of late re: dealing with dumb people on Facebook is leaving a real bunker-buster of a comment about them in someone else's comment thread then clicking "Turn off notifications" and never going back.

example?

None that come to mind-- like back in July a friend posted something on the anniversary of the moon landing, and someone else in the comments turned out to be a denier, and I was trying to educate him and explain why his repeatedly copy-pasted points were nonsense; and finally I just told him he was, in effect, a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt and his butt smells and he likes to kiss his own butt. Then I clicked "Turned off notifications."

yeah, that smarted for a moment Phil, but I came back with a real doozy, all our mutual friends were laughing at you

I SAID NO NOTIFICATIONS

@DarkBananamanKnight, @BarfSimpsonreal, and @PattyArquette are tweeting about #FacebookDoozies

heh I've done the No Notifications thing a lot lately too. a few times I've gotten a message from the thread starter apologizing for the nasty shit the other person said to me in response and then I'd be all confused cos I never saw it.

Holy shit HSB, I didn't realise anyone took FB (or twitter or w/e) so seriously that they think there's agreed-upon etiquette such as must-like-when-commenting, wtf. That kind of does my head in.

so seriously to think that but somehow not seriously enough to notice that it's not something anybody else does.

just to be safe i'm going to start fp'ing every ilx post i reply to

maybe these people are the wave of the future

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MDeY-2CjL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I morbidly wish I knew that person on FB so I could reply to them with YOU ARE AN UTTER WEIRDO NO ONE DOES THIS WHATS WRONG WITH YOU.

I saw the dude at a wedding less than a week after he scolded me. He said hello to me the way a couple says it after an awkward breakup.

I was like man yr really invested in your FB persona

Did you defriend him? He sounds like type to take that as a dagger to the chest.

lol @ author of 'the wave' being called Strasser

xxpost You should have handed him a napkin with "Like" written on it

ha ha I love it that people who spend enough time online to come up with arcane rules about FB likes can still take the "people on the internet have sad lives" attitude

This reminds me of when a friend-of-friend acquaintance defriended me with a message that I was always signed in to chat all the time so I must be a sad bastard. Like, how did they know I was always signed into chat unless they were themselves checking it all hours of the day? The irony being I hardly ever used FB chat I just had the tab open on my work computer all day.

that is some real lack of self-reflection

half the people that have it on don't even realize they have it on

sad sheeple

weeple

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