Facebook

I am not a fan of Facebook. I resisted setting up an account for a long time, despite the number of email invites that kept popping up in my inbox. However, I eventually caved in, and then wondered why I had. I sent a Facebook message to Kenny D asking him what it was all about. He didn’t seem to know either. I then spent the next few months becoming people’s friends, until I had amassed, ooh, about 14 friends in all. But having plenty of other ways to waste time of an evening, I never found myself actually logged on to the site unless I had a ‘friend request waiting’ or some such. Whenever I did so, I would discover that several of my friends had headbutted me, sent me a drink, or turned into pirates.

I realise that this is all going to sound a little priggish, but frankly I couldn’t be bothered with it all. I can understand why people with a lot of spare time on their hands (and a lot more friends than me) might find it entertaining and even possibly useful. It is, no doubt, a great way to keep up with old friends. Provided that your old friends are in fact, not really that old, and understand the concept of social networking websites.

But something old-fashioned in me somehow prefers finding out how people are face to face, or at least via email, rather than checking to see if they’ve updated their status. Email looks positively personal and intimate beside Facebook. And how honest can you really be, given that (depending on your privacy settings, no doubt) any Tom, Dick or Tara in the world can read your thoughts, and view your photos? This, of course, is also a weakness of blogs.

I eventually got fed up, not to say a little worried at the prospect of identity fraud. It’s one thing the government donating your private details to criminals in a user-friendly easy-to-read CD format, but it’s an even more astonishingly stupid thing to publish your own details online for the world to see.

So I decided to extinguish the flickering flame that was my presence on Facebook, and attempted to delete my account. The faceless Facebook hierarchy were not amused at this, and demanded that I explain myself by checking the appropriate box beside one of a list of ‘reasons for leaving’ that they’d prepared earlier. I tried ‘Worried about security’ whereupon a smug and authoritative message popped up, explaining that I could change my privacy settings if I was really worried about it. Slightly taken aback, I selected ‘Don’t find it useful’ to find another message appearing, pointing out how I might find Facebook more useful if I had made a bit of an effort.

Eventually they let me go, with the slightly disturbing parting shot – “You can reactivate your account any time you like by logging in again with your username and password.”

Excuse me? If my existing username and password still get me in to the system, how deleted exactly is my account? It seems that Facebook is a little like Hotel California… You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave…

7 thoughts on “Facebook”

  1. *lol* thank you, someone, anyone else in the world with no interest in facebook. I haven’t liked one of those sites since SparkMatch went offline 5 years ago, and it was a prank. Fun, hilliarious, and still a joke.
    again, just thanks.

  2. Oh Quinn – you’ve read my mind. I too got sucked into Facebook after resisting vocally for many months. So I figured, I can try it, I can see what it’s like, I can get past the horrible interface and ugly icons, I can, I can, I can.

    Well I did and I don’t like it and I’ve been plotting a nice blog entry much like this one and want to remove myself from Facebook too. Viva the anti facebook revolution!

  3. Hmm perhaps Jones, 12 squared and I can get together and set up an anti-Facebook coalition. We could even have our own website, where we could chat to each other. How ironic that would be.

    Dish, there’s no hope for you. Check out what another person of discernment thinks here :

  4. hi. where does Cricket begin, then? *lol*

    honestly, I’ve even watched and I think my early training in american baseball ruins much of the game for me without help. what I do know is the match I watched went on for ages and came up a draw, though I personally had seen much scoring on each side.

    help?

    have clicked to give you access to my emails so we dont have to do it here unless you choose.

    anti-facebook coalition unite. wouldn’t be the first outcome of finding a thing in common, really. would just be a nice one to rant a bit about.

    be well. it’s cold here, dont know how nice or not nice it is where you are, I was so cold in August when I was there I had to buy a pull-over jumper and gloves. 🙂 and I live in the cold mountains of the US.

  5. Aww.

    My experience with FB has been the opposite; having conflated FB with the childish MySpace and Bebo I resisted until I got an invite (I think it was our mutual hardcore skiing friend, “F”). Since joining I’ve been able to re-establish contact with friends I’ve not seen for /years/ and these contacts have translated into real-world contacts and meets.

    For me, playing Scrabulous is reason alone to stay!

    J

  6. I must say I find it rather puzzling that you quit facebook over fears of security and privacy. The amount of personal information I could glean from your blog is concerning!

    Facebook on the other hand allows you to set your privacy option as you wish, for example only friends can see my profile etc, whereas any tom dick or tara could easily see anything you put on your blog.

    I agree it would be dangerous if one’s profile was open but when you have full control over who sees what, I fail to see a problem.

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