The downside of Facebook....

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Sharing a very thoughtful article about TMI and Facebook 'friends', one of my personal favorite thinkers, Jaron Lanier is quoted in the article:

“The whole system is giving very ambitious people much less chance to reinvent themselves,” said Jaron Lanier, author of “You Are Not a Gadget,” and the change is less dramatic. Who would Bob Dylan end up, he wondered, if Zimmerman were there with him the whole time?

I have say though Mr. Zuckerburg is a genius, create a website that all the readers/users provide the content, and you sell their marketing information and get paid advertisers, brilliant, oh wait kind of reminds me of Wrong Planet a little bit....and yeah Wrong Planet most definitely tracks me and I immediately see advertisements on the WP home page, whenever I log in, directly connected to whatever I was last googling on the internet, kind of creepy but oh well, that's the internet right?

From the New York Times, something to think about before you post or 'creep' again on Facebook.

Don’t Tell Me, I Don’t Want to Know
By PAMELA PAUL
Published: February 10, 2012

UNLESS you are my best friend or my husband, I don’t need to know the macabre symptoms of your gastrointestinal virus. I don’t need to know about how much candy anyone, other than me, has eaten. As for my ex-boyfriend, I don’t need to hear about his wife’s ability to Zumba.

“At least the Internet gives us the option of blocking them, consigning them to oblivion forever. The only equivalent option in the real world is strangulation.” - The humorist ANDY BOROWITZ
Marcus Yam for The New York Times

“If the F.B.I. came and ransacked my computer they'd be like, ' What is your obsession with this person from sixth grade? Why have you looked at her picture a million times?' ” - The writer JULIE KLAM


“I had to go on a vacation-photo diet. I had this bizarre, voyeuristic habit of scrolling through people's travel photos online and then feeling like, Why haven't I walked the Great Wall of China?” - The novelist LAURA ZIGMAN

There are things I’d rather just not know about you.

Yet I, like most people, have become inundated with Too Much Information about the people I know and the people I wish I didn’t know but am now acquainted with. It’s as if we’re all trapped at a permanent reunion with everyone we ever bumped into at a street fair or waved to mistakenly in the cafeteria.

“The entire world has become this Dickensian series in which you are not visited by three ghosts but by eight million ghosts,” said Sloane Crosley, author of “How Did You Get This Number.” “I feel as if I see things about people that I don’t necessarily want to see, and then it’s lodged like a piece of corn in my subconscious.”

Whether it’s via Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, e-mail or some other form of Internet connectedness, the latest headlines from your super-successful frenemy from high school, the boss who fired you and the awful 14-year-old boy your daughter is in love with are now in your face. Sometimes you don’t want to know about these people at all. Other times, you don’t want to know quite so much.

“My high school friends from Kansas are dear, sweet people,” said Colby Hall, the founding editor of Mediaite.com. “But nothing says depressed like people asking you to feed the cows on Farmville.”

Last month, Google announced that posts from its Google Plus member profiles would be sprawled across the company’s search results. Searching for the phrase “yellow bikini,” for example, you might see a snapshot of your former English teacher on the beach in Aruba. A Google spokesman asserts that the program is designed to combat “the faceless Web.”

The faceless Web, seriously? More like the Web of too many faces.

“There’s one person who keeps coming around in the People You May Know Box on Facebook where just the suggestion of this person changes my whole day,” said Pam Houston, the novelist. “It’s essential to my well-being to create the illusion that this person doesn’t exist.”

Even if we like a person, we don’t necessarily like — or even “like” — what we find out about them online. Do we need to see a rival’s witticism promiscuously retweeted? “I had to stop following certain friends because I was constantly seeing them tweet about all the parties that I wasn’t invited to!” said Laurie David, a Hollywood producer and author. “The worst is the Twitpic — people take pictures of themselves at these fun dinners, and you’re not there.”

Sure, you can unfollow, unsubscribe, de-link or tune people out. “At least the Internet gives us the option of blocking them, consigning them to oblivion forever,” Andy Borowitz, the humorist, “shared” in an e-mail. “The only equivalent option in the real world is strangulation.”

But many people see no escape. “Even if you hide a person’s newsfeed, you know it’s there,” Ms. Crosley lamented. “And then you might find yourself going to their page to get a direct hit, which can only be worse.”

Let’s be straight: it’s not just that other people’s minutiae bombard us regularly. Sometimes, we seek it out despite ourselves. Whether you call it low-buzz stalking, cyberstalking or the unsettling new term “creeping,” people can now browse around the edges of former intimates’ lives, learning much too much about them: they can do perfect inverted yoga poses; they have married well; last week they had dinner with Bono.

“If the F.B.I. came and ransacked my computer, they’d be like: ‘What is your obsession with this person from sixth grade? Why have you looked at her picture a million times?’ ” said Julie Klam, whose next book, “Friendkeeping,” is about actual friendships.

Those who might shudder at the notion of cracking a close friend’s diary feel no compunction about browsing through the timeline of an utter nonconnection. “I’m incredibly intrusive about looking at old girlfriends to see what their kids look like,” said Euan Rellie, an investment banker. “I am constantly looking at people and thinking, What a lovely ski holiday! I wish I’d been with that group of good-looking people in Aspen.”

How is it that activities we wouldn’t in a million years be roped into doing in real life — paging through an acquaintance’s baby album, suffering through a relative’s slide show from Turkey — become strangely alluring online?

“I had to go on a vacation-photo diet,” admitted Laura Zigman, the novelist. “I had this bizarre, voyeuristic habit of scrolling through people’s travel photos online and then feeling like, Why haven’t I walked the Great Wall of China? And guilt: I should be taking my son to Spain. I don’t even like to travel!”

Some people force their information on you.

“People will post things on my Facebook walls — political statements that are just strange — religious rants that don’t reflect my values,” said Adam Werbach, chief sustainability officer at Saatchi & Saatchi. “I feel like I’ve got to scrub it off like a graffiti squeegee man.”

But while other peoples’ unsolicited information can be amusing or annoying, it can also be hurtful. For singles, the Internet is fraught with painful T.M.I. Never mind a man graciously telling a woman he’s met someone new and wants to pursue that relationship. One look at his active profile on Match.com, and his cover is blown.

“You meet someone at a party, and instead of them asking for your number, they’ll say, ‘I’ll find you on Facebook,’” complained Dodai Stewart, editor of Jezebel.com. “Then I’ll see drunk party photos of the guy with other women he’s dating. I end up unfriending because I just can’t deal with it.”

It’s impossible to electronically untangle yourself from an ex without generating a big fuss in your mutual extended network.

“You’ll have just successfully put a person out of your mind, and then you’ll see a friend of a friend comment on his Facebook status, ‘Congratulations on your engagement!’ ” said Maura Kelly, a co-author of “Much Ado About Loving: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Date Expectations, Not-So-Great Gatsbys, and Love in the Time of Internet Personals.”

“Other people’s happiness doesn’t bother me unless I’ve dated them before,” Ms. Kelly said. “And then I’m really disturbed by it.”

Shelly Turkle, a psychologist and author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other,” spoke of the effects. “People pay a psychological price for seeing information about former friends and spouses and colleagues that they really shouldn’t be seeing,” she said. It’s not good for our emotional health and, she said, “It makes people feel bad because they know they shouldn’t look at this stuff — but they can’t help it!”

A study published last month in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the happier they perceived their friends to be and the sadder they felt as a consequence.

What we’re losing, Ms. Turkle said, is a healthy form of compartmentalization. We can no longer box up aspects of our home life when we go to work or tuck away distressing episodes from our past. Never mind ever moving on.

Think of a life without closure: The boy you made a fool of yourself over in high school is now a private-equity king with 400,000 followers. The face of the guy who date-raped you in college pops up as Someone You Might Know.

“For most of my life, I’d encounter people and then they’d be gone,” said Caitlin Flanagan, the cultural critic. “You’d have to go to a major library and pore through phone books or hire a private detective to track them down.” Now it’s way too easy. “You can get this instant download and find out their whole life story and download all their pictures,” she said. “But then you’re like, ‘That’s enough of that person.’ ”

Weren’t we better off knowing a little bit less, a little less often, about everyone else? After high school graduation, a theater geek could once dye his hair blue, come out of the closet or declare himself a semiotician without so much as a backward glance. Once the kinks were worked out, he could introduce his new self, by which time most people would have forgotten about whom he used to be.

Today, kids who graduate have to drag all their elementary school and high school “friends” along with them.

“The whole system is giving very ambitious people much less chance to reinvent themselves,” said Jaron Lanier, author of “You Are Not a Gadget,” and the change is less dramatic. Who would Bob Dylan end up, he wondered, if Zimmerman were there with him the whole time?

And while you’re still in upper-childhood, unneeded social information is plastered everywhere. “There’s no such thing as a small party that you only hear about a month later because now kids make sure that everyone knows a party is going on and that everyone else isn’t invited,” said Mark Bauerlein, author of “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future.”

What does this mean for our own data spills? “Honestly, I’m more worried about people finding out stuff about me,” said Jill Soloway, a comedian and TV writer and producer. “A lot of times I’ll post things like, ‘Let’s organize a hipster Jewish Shabbat!’ and then I think, what if business people think I’m this religious Jewish person now? Something that seems fun and silly to me might seem really weird to a co-worker.”

Alas, what strikes us as witty, original and winning often comes across to the rest of the world as sloppily confessional, self-promotional or trite. It is, I confess, paradoxically and distressingly difficult for me not to post about how much candy I’ve eaten on a given day. And even I don’t really want to know about that.

I agree, in some cases it can be an invasion of privacy and I do believe that it is mainly used for blogging, however no one is making you sign up to Facebook, only half the population of the United Kingdom use Facebook and out of the other half that do, I'm sure some accounts are inactive.

"The downside of Facebook...." - You're making it sound as if there's an upside to facebook.

points taken

And yes no one is making anyone sign up for Facebook other than peer pressure and relatives.

It was after much carrying on from my sister, that I finally signed up for Facebook.

Such hard work to keep my carefully curated image updated. Sitting there in a curmudgeonly mood thinking, I don't like a single thing any of my 'friends' have posted today and I am not going to like anything. Then I reconsider and start dutifully clicking like on links, activities, funny sayings people have posted etc. Wouldn't want to disappoint my 'friends'....

Then dealing with the exuberant types who send me messages of, 'oh wouldn't it be great if we all got together again?' Uh no it would not but how to go about politely saying no? Plan B, just don't answer the message...silence speaks volumes right?

There's a reason I call it Fakebook.

And now I know way too much about people I had left far behind me, and well yes they know way too much about me too....

Only half the UK is signed up for Facebook. Goodness, must be that sangfroid thing right? Versus the over share Americans?

Joking!

I'm gradually weaning myself off Facebook. All I end up using it for is a means to compare myself to others. I think that's a sign that I don't *really* care what people I barely know are doing on a day-to-day basis. Facebook is pointless.

I have never done Facebook, Twitter, etc., and never will. There is nothing really private about these sites, and I don't want my private stuff out there. The only "social" sites I deal with are WP, because it helps me with spectrum info, and Dear Abby. I occasionally get useful insight there, and like to read and respond to some of the letters there. At WP there are also a lot of other forums for other topics that can be helpful, too. I have posted questions on the computer forum a couple of times. I have also read and responded to a number of posts on the general forum. However, I have no interest in joining a major, public social site like Facebook, or Twitter. I contact relatives by email or phone. I really don't want my whole life out in public. I am not an exhibitionist, or a masochist. I also don't want to be inundated by info about every single thing about everyone else on the planet, right on my own site. I prefer to be my own "gate keeper", and staying off the general social sites helps me do that. I don't find my membership in WP to be intrusive, and Dear Abby is just an advice column. Those, plus some e-newsletters I subscribe to, and my family emails are enough I-net "social" contact for me.

Remember, you get to choose how connected you are to the web. You decide what you put out there. You decide what you take in, and you can filter and block when necessary.

I followed my own advice on that last week regarding Google, and their plans to become even more intrusive into people's lives. I had a home page there for several years. I updated another home page I have at another site, so that I now have almost all the same RSS feeds at the rival site that I had at Google. I book marked the sites that I couldn't find the feeds on, or that wanted me to cut and paste code. I am not a computer geek, so I don't know anything about that. Then I deleted my Google account. I also removed them from my drop-down list of search engines. Lately, they had been bumping my default search engine--Ixquick--and I had to keep changing back. Now that they are no longer on the drop down list, Google can't bump Ixquick. I use Ixquick because they don't track you. If I need to use Google Search, I still can, but I get to choose when.

If you don't want the intrusiveness of Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc., then don't participate. There are other alternatives out there.

I quite Facebook a few weeks back, but yeah that artricle is interesting.

Timeline can be a dangerous tool if not done right, especially for children.

Whoever thought of that idea must at least disable this sort of thing for anyone under the teenager years unless supervised by an adult.

I left since I never used it, friends never commented on my (rare) comments so it was a waste of time.

Plus some freaks really do some weird s**t on there so Timeline is going to make you cringe even more for those types of people.

I deactivated my facebook a few months ago
While it can be useful for catching up with old friends, it is also unfortunately used as a way for bullies to remain faceless and pick on people without much consequence. Too much to deal with imo.

My thoughts on Facebook are this. All my friends from school I wanna talk to, I still do without Facebook. Phones exist, email exists, IM clients exist, anyone I need to talk to, I will. I've missed on some stuff due to lack of Facebook, but in hindsight, it's irrelevant. Anyone who wants to talk to me can, and I can talk to anyone I wanna talk to.

Also, I can only imagine Facebook just being hell. Even just with AIM in high school, I'd get harassed by random kids from school who didn't like me or whatever, so much so I blocked everyone not on my buddylist. That's just with AIM, Facebook seems like hell on earth in that regard.

My school people got on a reunion after meeting on facebook

they posted pictures, photos of the fun they had and many of them added each other

i commented on one of the picture saying that true childhood friendship...since its been long time now
and they still kept in touch

the next day others also commented and i noticed that my comment was removed
whereas comments such as you look fat or notice is visible etc are still there
why was my comment removed??? it was not a provocative one or anything.....

I hate comments being removed for no reason. A producer removed my somewhat critical comment from an artist's page. Excuse me? I have all of their albums, I'm allowed to make a comment about the vocals on a new track.

should i ask them why they removed my comment........
OR
should i just delete them from my friendlist

Both seem reasonable, I mean, I'd be offended also.

Yeah, I don't deactivate my account anymore, I just don't go back.