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How do you socialize and not Facebook?


doctorclu

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The other day, with all that is going on in the world, mirrored with just as equally and similar unfair things going on in hobbies, I simply had enough of Facebook.   The question at the end of this because I really want to know, "did you Facebook and now don't" and, what did you do to replace it?   (Need some feedback and ideas)  :D

 

 

 

The prologue... (As said in Up Pompeii!)

 

I've had a love/hate relationship with Facebook for years.  And it is not Facebook's fault, more the people.  As I look at it, for every pro there is a con.

 

1) pro - I get to keep up with friends

    Con - I get to keep up, or have access to, people I'd rather not see, know about, etc.

 

    As one friend put it with recent events "Facebook makes friendships last longer than they were meant to".   I just laughed.

 

  2) Pro - Facebook groups are fun.

      Con - Facebook groups.. well, depends on the group.   You do get people beyond your circle, actually most of the time it was cool.

 

    But I think the problem I had with Facebook: It was too good.  :P   Yeh isn't that ironic?

 

    So let's put it in this context.   A club, you meet every weekend, every other weekend, or once a month.   Things are done, discussed, you see people, you exchange ideas, have some fun, you go home.  And then you dream and think about what will happen at the next meeting where things are discussed.   Did you have an argument with someone?  Well, good news is, you are there to state your opposing views, and as the week goes by, generally you cool off, and things simmer down a bit.

 

    Then we added mailing lists and yahoo groups.   Not bad.   You read all the messages that come in, you respond.  You have time to think on responses.  Things are pretty cool, but over time, as cool as it was to discuss things offline and get business done during the week, we noticed a few things.   As stated many times, communication is a lot of visual and auditory cues, and most of that is gone is the medium I am writing right now.  Right now you are seeing symbols that make sounds, that make words, those words are concepts taught to you the reader in maybe a similar way, but remembered or comprehended in a different way than me.   So you read what I am saying in writing, and yet you don't have the same baggage, to use a humorous reference, that got me where I write this.

 

     Bottom line, I write, you read, and through similar words are said, they are not understood EXACTLY the same.

 

     And in mailing lists and yahoo groups, we found many misunderstandings.  But we tended to see each other, call each other, so this generally leveled out.

 

     Then we had blogs.   Still thought out messages, that people might have read if you were interesting enough, or read by the hundreds if you were a hot girl.  :P

 

      Then came Facebook.   SOOOO many on Facebook.  Just about everyone has a Facebook account, maybe two!   Pictures fly, words fly, I got to know so many people I might not have known otherwise.   And here is where I experienced over time, information overload.   So many voices, you address a thought, and another thought pops up.  You reply, and soonafter there is another reply to reply to.  And so, potentially, you either get people either in arguments constantly, or people talking at each other.  

 

     So all this to say, you get a chance to breathe.   Oh sure you can turn the computer off, but in my case over the years, I just got more and more connected to everything.   And some things that happened in a club came off as a snap judgement.   So strange.  We can see tons of pictures of people, talk to them instantly, and yet dehumanize people, their emotions, their dignity, as if it was nothing.

 

     I'm seeing a lot of things come into play in our society that my Mom would speak against.  "Two wrongs don't make a right",  "Might doesn't make right", etc.

 

     There is the herd mentality, an accepted "right" that people try to whip you into.   Does your opinion differ?   "Well you are wrong and you are a deviant!"

 

     [Reading over the above later, of course you are a "Deviant".  You "differ" from another opinion.  Is different bad?   Diversity... we preach we want it, but what we want is people that are like us.]  :P

 

     The other day I saw the ugliness of the world as only Facebook could show it.   People convinced they were right, and people rioting?   Someone asked in texts to a group why people do this?   Because the peaceful way of saying "these people matter and this needs to be done differently" was laughed at.   There has been the attitude all through society, which is mirrored in hobbies of "What are you going to do about it?"   To be clear I'm 100% against rioting and looting or any destruction.   But I'm also 100% against people being ignored.   And what a lovely place for such rock and a hard place frustration to boil over than a place like Facebook.  Honestly, many of us, stuck between violence and feeling like we have no outlet otherwise, Facebook was a great place to vent.

 

     And then, as an ironic mirror, I saw in a hobby I was in where a person punished for a severe reason have that overturned, while people of considerably less punishments remain punished.   Difference was, first person was one of the group that was in power, and the rest were not.  Not only is society might makes right, with the "what are you going to do?" to the rest, well, as I told other people, what happens when you do that to people?  They give up.  But they don't give up in the way you want them to.  They give up on a dream, or an idea, and they adopt another dream or idea.  

 

     You had people that bought into civilization, willingly took abuse to sacrifice for that civilization that we all built, now being told they don't matter, being shown they don't matter.   To be clear, I am not talking a particular race or people, this is happening across the board.   And people look at this current attitude as their self worth is being laughed at and, eventually standing up say, "No, I'm not buying this..."

 

"The old King is dead, long live the King!"  -Coldplay.

 

(The above, to clarify, is not a call to overthrow or kill anyone, but in this case the giving up on one dream or idea for another.)

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So back to the original question:  :)

 

Did you once Facebook an no longer Facebook?   Yes yes, I know, maybe the above problem had nothing to do with Facebook at all, except that they are too damned efficient at people people communicate. 

 

And if you still like Facebook, well, don't feel you need to defend it here.   I loved it for YEARS.   Understand, I liked a lot about Facebook, just felt I needed to pull the plug on it.

 

But got a void to fill.   How do you socialize now?   Places like Atariage?   email, phone, text?   Do you like other social media better?   In other words, how did you adapt and move on?

 

 

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Well, mainly I use facebook as a way to see pictures of my own kids. I have "friends" on facebook..people I know or have known through out my life, but I keep that list pretty small.  < 100 people. My wife is the handy one with the camera and captures all the family activities, and honestly the only way I have time to see pictures of us doing things with our kids is by seeing what my wife posts after the weekend.   Although I've always been a bit of a techie..and early internet adopter, I think something is sort of lost for me when the medium ceases to be the wild west, and becomes the shopping outlet.   Although I'm a software engineer, I rarely have my phone out if I'm not making a call, I rarely post anything to facebook, and in general, when I'm at dinner, or the beach, or hiking, or travelling through Japan...I just prefer to actually pay attention and soak it in rather than being tied to a device. 

 

Facebook is like a cocktail party where you have to overhear everyone's proclamations....

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