Read. And weep.
Really. Really?
If you don't have a Facebook account, there's something wrong with you?
Disclaimer: Facebook is the second-most visited page in my Internet peregrinations, just after Reddit. I frequently update my status, chat with friends old and new, and play several games. I really appreciate having most of my friends in one place. I don't understand Twitter because I already have a Facebook Wall that does the same thing.
I spend entirely too much time on Facebook. Online in general, really. It's one very good reason I flat-out refuse to buy a smartphone: give me the ability to go online away from home and I'll be sucked out of real life in short order. I'll become like those people at the Olympic Closing Ceremonies. Did you see that? Seventy thousand bodies in the audience, and it looked like sixty or so thousand of them had no interest in actually watching the God-damned thing. Every time they panned the crowd, all I saw was a panoply of phones. There's something about that I find almost soul-crushing. It reminds me of the giant hip-hip-hooray that went up when it was announced Disney World was getting Wi-Fi. You know, the happiest place on earth? Apparently it sucks because it's not the Intermet.
(Yes, my attitudes on the Internet are frighteningly ambivalent. Always have been. I used to routinely spend upwards of ten hours a day online back in the early nineties. Now, as then, I love the constant information feed and I hate the almost irresistible compulsion to drown in it. I yearn to be connected, yes. For somebody who spent much of his youth existing on the outside of every inside there ever was, "connection" is a potent, potent force. But I'm deeply afraid that this constant connection is slowly depriving me of something essential to my humanity.
I'll be going up to my Dad's in a couple of days. He's on the shores of a river, forty miles from the nearest town of any size. High speed Internet is a recent phenomenon in his little corner of Paradise. He's online a fair bit, to be sure.
He's not on Facebook.
I think privacy issues are his biggest concern. But even more so, I'd suggest he doesn't need Facebook. He has a social circle the likes of which I lack the words to adequately describe. A lifetime of service to his community has made it so he can scarcely leave his driveway without encountering at least one friend. As a kid I used to be so impatient because it seemed like we'd never actually get anywhere for all the people wanting to stop and chat.
A former colleague of mine, name of Craig, is the sort of guy would have hundreds of friends on Facebook if he ever bothered to get an account. He doesn't, probably because he's too busy playing several different sports on teams far and wide. Sitting at a computer is death by boredom as far as Craig is concerned. He'd be a catch for anybody with a glove to catch him, and never mind the lack of a Facebook account. All you have to do is meet the man and talk to him for five minutes and you'll know what kind of person he is: a good one. Yet because he isn't a Zucker, he's somehow suspicious? Give me a break.
An e-friend I know only as Catelli tweets frequently, occasionally blogs...and shuns Facebook like a horde of plagues. Knowing what I know of the guy--he's in IT--I'd suspect he's not comfortable with the system's architecture and even less comfortable with being commoditized (and make no mistake about it: if you're on Facebook, you're a product). The thought that not having a Facebook account makes him somehow suspicious would fill him with scorn and a touch of existential horror.
We're in the middle of a social revolution. Every step forward brings outcry from those who preferred things the way they were. Every change begets more change until you wake up one day in a world not your own. I resent the notion that change should be forced on people. You have the right not to be on Facebook, and you should have the right not to be judged for not being on Facebook.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to post this on Facebook.
2 comments:
I had a Facebook account, but I wound up deleting it because I didn't use it. It had no purpose for me. And then yeah, the woeful security, lack of privacy controls, etc. etc. have nailed that coffin shut.
Among my IT peers, very few have Facebook accounts, and even those that do, even fewer actually use it.
In real life I have a very small social circle, one that I can maintain without Facebook. Heck, none of my male friends have Facebook accounts. Their wives might, but they don't, they don't go anywhere near it. Reversing that trend, my wife doesn't have a social media presence at all. So all the wives (except mine) are online, but none of the guys (except me) are. So the utility of Facebook as a means of keeping up with my friends for me is effectively zero.
Twitter (and blogs) have allowed me to extend my social circle to include like-minded individuals that I wouldn't have met otherwise. Which I find is cool, but it also allows me to control how that sharing happens, Facebook was much more in my face, and I resented it.
But the premise that only normal people have a Facebook account makes me LOL like never before.
I will quote Jim Morrison as my rebuttal to that, "People are strange, when you're a stranger."
Yes, I would agree with Catelli in that Twitter is only useful for following people you A) don't know in person and B) don't care enough about to fill up your Facebook wall with.
As for the shameful way our government/society treats people who don't participate in willingly giving away all of their personal information, I highly recommend you watch the presentation "Privacy is Dead. Get Over It." (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3079242748023143842) It is an absolutely scary presentation from someone back in 2008. I can only imagine what is possible today.
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