Facebook: the height of mindlessness?

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What's annoyin about Facebook more than anything is that it's a waste of time. Before social networking sites were invented, people used the internet for research, e-mails, message boards and chatrooms. Basically the internet was a place to meet like-minded people and a cheaper and quicker way to send post. Sure it wasn't all highbrow. You had teenagers indulging in self-indulgent horseplay on chatrooms. But on the whole the internet was an aspirational thing and people used it to better themselves.

The internet still is a place to explore and meet interesting strangers and find out things you didn't know. That's what I love about the internet. But the bad side of it now is that lots of people are using social networking sites and what these sites do is they suck people in and make them inward and insular. I hate the trend to become ever closer to people you're already close to. Aren't mobile phones enough? You can already contact almost anyone you know at the press of a few buttons on one of them. Now people seem to want to know everything about you, even if they were just an acquaintance at school.

It seems like voyeurism to me. Let's see who has the best job now. Let's see who meets the most women and posts photographs of their sexy bodies out on club nights. Let's see who can gather the most friends in a friends list. Let's see who can add the most inane applications telling you how the meaning of your life is related to a pop quiz. Probably everyone on Facebook knows at least one guy who's post a picture of himself topless, letting everyone know he's ripped. And we're all no doubt familiar with the ubiquitous pictures of female Facebookers in groups of women demonstrating ever-so-unsubtly their social prowess.

The dark side of it is I think that social networking sites are glamourizing and promoting stupidity. How many people talk about science or art over facebook? Or intellectual theories? Or anything that will be worth reading in 20 years' time? Is it useful at all?

What do you think of Facebook?

Just like Myspace, it's a stupid thing and it annoys me greatly.

The worst thing is the hypocrisy. You see the true nature of the people you thought you knew by exactly what it is they lie about, how vain they are, and how much they strive to show it. Ugh.

Facebook and My Space sure are mindless. Wanna add me as a friend?

Facebook gets on my nerves. Oh add me as a friend cool! I've got more friends than you haha. What a total load of BS. And they all look like such idiots sharing their photos. It's like a competition who's having the best life. And they write on eachother's walls pretending to be so nice to eachother.

To be honest, I don't really see the problem with it. You don't have to add the inane applications. You don't have to buy into what's important to other people. I find facebook useful because it allows me to have a limited amount of contact with people. so that they can tell that I care about them, but I don't have to spend a lot of time in uncomfortable social situations which I would rather avoid. The competition about friends lists and stuff like that is only an issue if you buy into it.

It sounds to me as though the problem you have with facebook is not with facebook itself but with the people whom you know who use it.

Or maybe I just know more genuine people than you.

No, I'm talking about "not having to do x", which is just pretending something isn't there.

I have Facebook and it is not mindless to me because it can help be social in one aspect.

annoying things about facebook are the spam messages and being bitten by your friends vampires (apparently facebook has a bite your friends feature) also i do not get the poke your friends thing.

I like Facebook. It's an excelent tool to keep in contact with old friends.

Its absolutely true, Facebook is a complete waste of time, its just people advertising themselves, pretending they have all these friends who they once knew or even friends of friends who they have never met. There are people who seem to live their lives though FB or My Space, and never leave their house or go out with all these web friends, and its pathetic. People are carried away with these sites, but I limit myself on these site, and only allow friends to see my info

I have a facebook account, but I only log into it once a day, I mainly use it to message a friend or two. Most of the people on my friends list are people I don't even like, they are people from my high-school. But I do get curious as to what they are doing with thier lives.

In other words, I don't mind facebook, but I really detest the people who spend all their time on it, sending all of that 'funwall' crap to each other and sappy 'friendship poems'

Myspace is the real enemy to me.