iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

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

meet the FeeBles

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.

― Just noise and screaming and no musical value at all. (Colonel Poo), Wednesday, August 19, 2015 9:40 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who the fuck sends somebody a message saying that? what a psycho

Dear Poo,

I am sorry to tell you that we can no longer be FB friends. Your constant presence on chat leaves me convinced that you are hollow and sad and I must always move toward light.

Sincerely,
Guy With Lots of Real Life Friends Who All the Time Does Fun Real Life Stuff Like Having Sex

the thing abt facebook is I've been added by people from elementary school or even later than that, and these were people I'd forgotten completely and now they are back in there. It feels unnatural. Some people in your life, and I mean this without rancor or hostility, are meant to be forgotten. Just like you are meant to be forgotten by others.

Yeah, I'm fb friends with my babysitter from when I was 4. It's really weird.

Some people in your life, and I mean this without rancor or hostility, are meant to be forgotten. Just like you are meant to be forgotten by others.

In the long run I think this may be one of the biggest shifts wrought by "social media" generally. I mean we can block and unfollow, and there's clearly less shit on my feed from random people I went to high school with than from people I hang out with in the here and now, but I still know WAY more about the lives of random people I went to high school with than an equivalent 33-year-old would have known ten years ago. I'm not sure what all kind of knock-on effects this would have, but I think it'd be kinda interesting to live in a much smaller world, with a much shorter list of people whose lives I know about, or have to choose to stay abreast of. My sense is that even most people's Christmas-card lists, in my parents' generation, though being by nature broader than the people they really stayed actively in touch with, were consiiiiiderably edited down from "everyone they've ever known at all in their lives."

I don't generally re-add people from 20 years ago as I find it fairly pointless and weird, but sometimes it's actually a way of connecting with someone who maybe you missed out on the first go-round that actually connects with you. I wound up actually meeting a friend from junior high that I'd lost touch with in person and it was actually a very rewarding meeting. have also made friends with an old high school acquaintance that I didn't get to know well the first time around that actually turned out to be a cool dude that watches Dolphins games with me sometimes.

other than that, I prefer to forget I existed between ages 11-18

I still know WAY more about the lives of random people I went to high school with than an equivalent 33-year-old would have known ten years ago. I'm not sure what all kind of knock-on effects this would have, but I think it'd be kinda interesting to live in a much smaller world, with a much shorter list of people whose lives I know about, or have to choose to stay abreast of.

As someone who was a 33-year-old ten years ago, I would say that the presence of occasional knowledge about / commentary from people I went to high school with has an extremely tiny effect on my life, if any. It didn't feel like living in a smaller world 10 years ago, I can tell you that much.

Frankly I suspect if some people from longer ago than high school added me, I'd struggle to know who they were.

I ignore a lot or friend reqs anyway - especially from vague family-linked people (some old friend of my mums who I dont even know), or schoolfriends I havent spoken to in 30 years, because fuck off.

I prefer to forget I existed between ages 11-18