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The Top Five Reasons to Get Off Facebook
By Ben ReiningaJanuary 12th, 2010, 3:55 pmComments (22)
I know, I know - it's part of your daily routine. Get up, tweet, brush your teeth, take a photo of yourself with a toothpaste beard, tweet about it, post it on Facebook, and wait for the LOLz to start rolling in. But let's ask ourselves a question: which of these activities is good, which is very good, and which is likely to end with your photo on a blog as the butt of a very terrible joke? Well, since everyone knows that brushing your teeth is good for you and when you stopping tweeting, you stop existing IN THE WORLD, the obvious answer is C. For your edification, I present to you five reasons to get the hell off the 'Book.
5. Because Some Things Should Not Be Broadcast Online
Going out on a limb and getting rejected? Sucks. Going out on a limb and getting rejected in front of a bunch of people on Facebook? Suckier. Getting rejected and then mocked and then having your Facebook rejection posted and re-posted endlessly across the internet while thousands of people you've never met laugh and laugh and laugh? Um, this.
4. Because Your Parents and Grandparents Are On It
Facebook is for old people and babies. So stop worrying about your boss seeing that picture your fiance took in Cabo and start worrying about Nana and little cousin Jimmy. In the first six months of 2009, facebook saw a 513% increase in users over fifty-five. And a 20% decrease in college and high school kids. Which means we are fast returning to a place where "poking" goes back to being something that grandmothers do to the cheeks of five-year-olds.
3. Because Some Things Should Not Be Broadcast Online (See no. 5)
Oh Fred. Poor, poor Fred. Hosting parties is a stressful enterprise, and the social world can be hard, especially for the awkward among us. I empathize with you so much. So much that I want to run away from you backwards pointing and laughing - so that I can separate myself from you as much as possible, and to get home so I can lock myself up and pray that I am never, ever this sad and lonely. Which is kind of what the internet is for, right?
2. Because Mark Zuckerberg Is Actually Big Brother
Today, Gawker is running a pretty disturbing exposé, based on a inside info from a Facebook employee. Apparently, Facebook compiles lots and lots of super-personal information about you - things like whose profile you visit and all of your messages - and is careless about giving access to this to their employees. Which, to be fair, we all kind already knew. But reports have just started leaking about a giant Facebook-run youth camp inside a volcano in Zambia, where youngsters receive training in use of and care for "The 'Book."
1. Because Some Things Should Not Be Broadcast Online (See no. 3, 5)
Sweet Jesus. As if Junior High wasn't hard enough. This little girl Kate, who I think is like 15, will be famous for the rest of her life as "The girl who would have given Brian a blow-job if he cut his hair." Until she cracks, and runs away, stops eating, gets a fake tan and starts posting crazy videos of herself to her devoted mob of internet fans. And then she'll be known as the most famous, although not the first, victim of Facebook-Shame Related Madness (FSRM). Or, um, Tila Tequila.
Commentarium (22 Comments)
Is it bad that I want to post this on my facebook and then tweet about what I posted??
No. Give in to the temptation.
Kate was pretty mean for ratting him out, but her little brother is a budding sociopath. Fair play would be to show the diary to her parents, not to slut-shame her in front of the world.
Which part of "social networking" do people have trouble understanding? Facebook is the exact antitheses of the old notion of privacy, which is "the right to be left alone." People who join and regularly use Facebook do it for the express purpose of always being in, and interacting with, a crowd of people, essentially in public. There is a very private and generally secure way of sending targeted communications, which is called e-mail. Nor is inappropriate content confined to Facebook or its ilk, as we have all received (or may have even sent) the mass email or text message that really should not have been sent. I am not trying to defend Facebook and don't have a stake in social networking sites in general. I do think that we, the users, need to get real about what the inherent function of Facebook is, and not have conflicting expectations of being Social and Private at the same time. Pick one and go with it.
No one is saying that it's Facebook's fault. But, people ARE using facebook as if it were private, (ie, the guy who asked out that girl on her wall). That's all. Don't put things on it that you wouldn't your grandma to see, or Scanner to post.
The truth is that Facebook gives me no utility. It's a way to keep alive faux-relationships that don't add any value to mine or anybody's life. Yeah you can keep up with old friends on it, and yeah it's good if you have family spread out across the country, but for the most part it was a big fat waste of time.
I'm a recovering FB addict, and haven't logged in for 3 months, and let me tell you......................IT'S GREAT! Can't tell you how great it feels.
Now if I could only get off this NERVE addiction.......
I agree that Nerve has become more addicting than Facebook for me. Maybe you guys should start a social network? My interest in Facebook has fizzled.
I think the funniest part is how this article goes after Facebook on these points but implicitly presumes Twitter isn't a thousand times worse, more constant, and in less coherent chunks. They both suck in their own way, but at least Facebook has structure and pretends to have a point. Twitter is just a self-centered stream of blather.
Um, yeah. I think the part about Twitter is joke. When you stop tweeting, you stop existing, in all caps. I think I smell irony..
NHB digs it and you should too!
NHBradio.com (Oh baby)
@ uh huh
Thank you, THANK YOU for having some sense! Tattling is not cool but siblings do it to each other. It's just part of growing up. What Chris did to his little sister is twisted and unforgivable in my book. Anybody who would do such a thing is a little shit who's probably doing much worse than hiding beer from his parents. And the comments on the post were almost worse. I didn't see one person who seemed at all perturbed by what the brother did. Instead, while I heard plenty of people defending his hiding beer as "normal", everybody was just calling the girl a "whore" who "got what she deserved." Yeah, and I bet if it were a BOY who's adolescent sexual fantasies had been exposed, everybody would be piling on him exactly the same way. Right. Apparently there are quite a few people who still believe that females with sex drives ought to be spared no humiliation, even if that female is a child.
Guess what. Young girls fantasize about sex too. Often and as graphically as their inexperience permits. Yes, it's true. I did it too and I didn't end up walking the streets. Ugh.
The overall feeling I got from this list was not "here is why Facebook is evil" but "people, please, DO try to have a private, inner life..." Can't argue there. Having thoughts that one does not immediately, publicly express can actually *improve* the depth of one's life. So I've heard.
While people's fuck-ups are a majority of the status updates, it makes for good laughs (for me at least) and not a reason to log out. While the author may find it a nuisance, the status updates that I can't stand are the ones by my pregnant girl friends who decide to share with their online community that they're 2cm dilated. I hate that shit! I don't want to hear about your crowning. And why are you logged onto Facebook? It leaves me baffled and disgusted all at the same time.
RE: LydiaSarah
Planning out sex like that goes above and beyond fantasizing.
Both of those kids are messed up.
@ Mikee
Come on, like it's really all that likely that she was planning on acting on it. I mean, anything is possible I suppose. Thankfully, I don't know the girl from Eve, but it seems far more likely to me that making a list like that really was just a form of fantasy. If we're going to start taking seriously a list of boys and sex acts on a piece of notebook paper covered with hearts as a literal plan of action for some wild promiscuous adventure, than we might as well haul in everybody who ever responded to a "marry, fuck, or kill" post for conspiracy to commit homicide. These things are games. My cousin and I used to giggle over the lists we made where we divided the guys at camp into "just friends" and "sleep with" categories. Guess what, we never slept with any of the guys. I mean, maybe this girl really has spent a lot of time planning out how to suck and fuck her way through the 8th grade but as a former teenage girl, it seems far more likely to me that this was the product of a goofy sleepover or something.
Hm. Good point. I hadn't thought of it like that, LydiaSarah, but that's totally what this is. It was some giggly thing she did with her friends, or alone, but either way - it's a journal entry. No one does 1/4 of the things (or people) they write about doing in their journals...
Re Gawker: "Facebook records and archives information on whose profile you view." Gawk!!
FTA: "Which means we are fast returning to a place where “poking” goes back to being something that grandmothers do to the cheeks of five-year-olds."
At least that beats your dad trying to get a poke at your girlfriends: http://i.imgur.com/TXaBE.jpg
Chris rules. For shame Katie.
Regardless of whether or not Katie is a particularly precocious young lady, the point is that doing something like to your sibling is horrible. I have a sister myself and we definitely fought as kids and occasionally did crappy things to each other. But something of this magnitude would have been inconceivable to both of us. At the end of the day, you don't delight in the suffering and humiliation of your sibling by others. That's fucked up.
Plus the level of cruelty of the commenters was disturbing and the double standard is maddening. Teenage boys planning on "giving their v-cards" is the subject of a popular teen comedy. A teenage girl doing the same thing is the subject of shame and derision. Nice world we live in.
The point is that you don't mess with someone's beer.
I would like to be droped from facebook, how do I do this?
Now you say something