Facebook, what happened? You used to be fun...
Thursday, 22 April 2010 16:37![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fatrockstarI like reconnecting with the people I'd lost track of over the years. Seeing how some of my classmates' lives turned out was interesting and in some cases amusing.
Less than a month ago I reached 200 friends there. I know all of them to some degree. The only exceptions would be my mother's college friend, who misses her as much as I do, and a couple of venues who created standard instead of business accounts for some reason. I do my fair share of ignoring, and have filtered my news feed of all the religious and political posters for all that's worth. Facebook will happily filter your news feed for you of the people you actually want to read at random. They have a nice little setting that will let you think you control it -- isn't that nice of them?
Lately several things have made me rethink my participation on Facebook. The first one is that my friend list is way too big. The second one is the recent announcement that all those privacy settings will soon become meaningless as Zuckerburg sells your information to advertisers. The third one has been getting under my skin for a while now, and is largely due to the growing friend list: Politics and religion.
At first I wasn't bugged too much. Some people are just really into Jesus, and I don't have a problem with that. Ignore, ignore, ignore. The "93% of my friends list won't repost this!" status updates I brushed off until a LOT of people were doing it. I started to feel harassed by it. More ignoring. When the political things started popping up I fought the urge to join in. Some of those groups were fine by me, but then over half my news feed started joining groups that contrasted sharply, and others got outright combative about them. One of my right-wing friends deleted his account, only to return a few weeks later with a whole new one under a modified name. His political views? "Hope you like your Oboma [sic] now." He deleted this new profile a little over a week ago. This is probably good.
I'd rather not deal with this. I keep my politics, religion, and personal details as far from the public eye as possible for a very good reason -- I have records to sell and shows to book. There are times I am looking for work, and the internet has become a major research tool for prospective employers. Why stir up shit for the sake of argument? Isn't that what politicians get paid for? Or lawyers? Anybody but me.
I'll keep my Facebook account alive for the sake of band promotion and those individuals that can only be reached there, but I'm backing off. Let's see if I can stay off FB for the month of May.
Less than a month ago I reached 200 friends there. I know all of them to some degree. The only exceptions would be my mother's college friend, who misses her as much as I do, and a couple of venues who created standard instead of business accounts for some reason. I do my fair share of ignoring, and have filtered my news feed of all the religious and political posters for all that's worth. Facebook will happily filter your news feed for you of the people you actually want to read at random. They have a nice little setting that will let you think you control it -- isn't that nice of them?
Lately several things have made me rethink my participation on Facebook. The first one is that my friend list is way too big. The second one is the recent announcement that all those privacy settings will soon become meaningless as Zuckerburg sells your information to advertisers. The third one has been getting under my skin for a while now, and is largely due to the growing friend list: Politics and religion.
At first I wasn't bugged too much. Some people are just really into Jesus, and I don't have a problem with that. Ignore, ignore, ignore. The "93% of my friends list won't repost this!" status updates I brushed off until a LOT of people were doing it. I started to feel harassed by it. More ignoring. When the political things started popping up I fought the urge to join in. Some of those groups were fine by me, but then over half my news feed started joining groups that contrasted sharply, and others got outright combative about them. One of my right-wing friends deleted his account, only to return a few weeks later with a whole new one under a modified name. His political views? "Hope you like your Oboma [sic] now." He deleted this new profile a little over a week ago. This is probably good.
I'd rather not deal with this. I keep my politics, religion, and personal details as far from the public eye as possible for a very good reason -- I have records to sell and shows to book. There are times I am looking for work, and the internet has become a major research tool for prospective employers. Why stir up shit for the sake of argument? Isn't that what politicians get paid for? Or lawyers? Anybody but me.
I'll keep my Facebook account alive for the sake of band promotion and those individuals that can only be reached there, but I'm backing off. Let's see if I can stay off FB for the month of May.
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23/4/10 02:01 (UTC)no subject
23/4/10 05:19 (UTC)