BLOG: Is Facebook worth the effort?
I don’t really make resolutions. But I do spend the first week of the new year looking at everything I’m doing with an eye toward “keep,” “change” or “scrap entirely.”
Right now, Facebook is on the chopping block. Is it just me or has Facebook become “white noise?”
Yes it’s a great way to follow the lives of folks with whom you wouldn’t otherwise be connected. For some reason all my friends are the kind who post stuff someone sent them. There’s no creativity to speak of. It’s almost never of interest.
I logged into my Hotmail account recently and this line was at the bottom of the screen: “Your friends haven’t done anything new lately.”
You’re telling me?
In fairness to my 40 or so friends, I have unreasonably high expectations due to my journalist bent. I expect the entire world to write with a modicum of creativty and verve. Silly me.
The other thing that troubles me about Facebook is the increasing amount of totally bogus garbage people post in the firm belief it is true and they’ve made a tremendous contribution to the body of world knowledge. Sometimes even when you can prove them wrong, they continue to leave the information up … with a “well it’s a good thought anyway” sort of attitude.
Again having spent all of my adult life attempting to write truthfully and thus avoid an extended stay in the hoosegow, I always figured everyone else would want to adhere to the same standard. Silly me.
I have one friend, for instance, who reposts everything sent to him daily by whatever site to which he could offer his email address. Some days it’s as high as a dozen reposts. It should be illegal to repost more than one or two items to a Facebook account.
And you hate to block someone’s posts or worse yet “unfriend” them. Actually, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with this feature of Facebook as my wife has. Must be a female thing. Her sense of it is that if you unfriend or if someone unfriends you, a catastrophe of universal cataclysm has occurred.
But if you continue to be disturbed by what someone posts on a daily basis, is it not hypocritical to not unfriend? Perhaps a sternly worded personal message would be more appropriate.
“Stop being such an idiot and think for yourself.” Probably a bit too strong.
In 2011, I shut down my Facebook account for about three months. I really didn’t miss it, and I don’t really think anyone missed me.
If it weren’t part of my job description to post to the Sun Sailor Facebook account, I might be tempted to do that again.
I know I can’t be the only out here in cyberspace trying to determine whether Facebook is really a necessity of life or whether life can go on without it. After all, many of us lived a good number of years before Facebook was invented and we were happy and well-adjusted folks – for the most part.
