to think that Facebook is for the vacuous and banal

[FunnysInTheGarden]

On the whole?

I mean it's worse than I thought. Am a recent convert, but the shit some folk post about their lives. I mean REALLY who is interested?

Pages and pages of my 'friends' most detailed stream of boring consciousness.

Mebeez I need to log off!

I am on facebook.

Love it because I am nosey and keeps me up to date with friends who I don't see as often as I would like.

Hate the posts by parents saying "well done poppy for getting all your spellings right this week". Poppy is 5 and doesn't have a facebook account and may not even be able to read the comment so why???? I'll tell ya why. Its so people can brag about how bright/special their little angels are.

Also have my godson as a friend. My word, teenager comments are mind numbing and what is all this "like and I'll rate ya" business.

My teenagers are both on FB and DS messages friends all the time after school. Their rural comprehensive seems very wholesome with no foul language or impoverished language - really nice kids. Their privately educated cousins though are quite shocking on FB with their 'friends' - appalling language and really ugly sentiments. Horses for courses I suppose.

You can hide newsfeed posts from whichever friends you want. I have done so for my sister's in-laws (who are my facebook friends for some reason) as their posts were things like "going to bed now" and "we had ice-cream for tea" - kinda dull and so many a day it was unreal. So on my newsfeed now I only get comments from friends I'm actually interested in!

A few years ago, I briefly had a business conversation with someone I'd never met. Afterwards he "friended" me on Facebook. I have no idea why. It turns out he's a gay Mormon and he posts endlessly on gay issues, Mormon issues and (mostly) issues to do with being a gay Mormon. I would de-friend him but it kind of makes a change from the kind of stuff my real friends write about.

ChickensHaveNoEyebrows

I regularly go through my friends list with a big fuck off scythe and cull anyone who commits any of the following facebook crimes:

- cut and paste statuses, any
- endless farmville updates
- text speak
- disgusting declarations of love to someone sitiing FIVE FEET AWAY
- 'Liking' things that prove them to be an idiot
- begging posts badgering me about sponsorship

Good rules! I'd add . . .

• posting "coming over here nicking all our jobs" type comments
• things like "that cheryl cole's a right cunt" etc
• giving exact plan of their day 10.30 hairdressers, 12.30 lunch with Tania . . .

I've actually had all of those.

Came off it after a year or two in Feb 2010. It was the best decision ever and absolutely no regrets. I was losing my faith in humanity.

Must admit that I'm a big user (although peed off about another format change) but again I'm someone who doesn't live in the same hemisphere as most of her family and has friends all over the place - most of them use facebook regularly so I'm more in touch with my extended family than I used to be as a result. It's great for sharing photos etc. Also, I grew up in Christchurch so the posts/photos from the earthquake groups keep informed exactly how the demolishion and rebuilding of my hometown is going which is fantastic.

I manage all the drivel by hiding it and only having people I actually want to know things about in my newsfeed. Realise also that I'm putting my life out there but so far the benefits have outweighed the rest

I found a number of old friends/schoolfriends/from travelling/uni etc, seen some pictures of DCs etc, have sent a couple of private messages, but apart from that, I am not really interested in that nonsesne some people post there and only go there every couple of months - I am still not sure whether I missed something there.

What do you use it for?

I have taken the app off my phone after I was scrolling through stupid status updates at breakfast one morning and DD2 fell out of her high chair. How guilty did I feel? Now I just look at it when I'm on the laptop occaisionally. Facebook eats time.

facebook is useful for competative boasting

nowt else

Bit of a FB addict here... I have lots of friends abroad, so it's a nice way to stay in touch. Plus I spent a lot of time outrageously flirting with got to know my wonderful husband in a non-pub environment on FB, so I will always have a soft spot for it! I do hate the weird updates and suggestions it keeps making though....

I'm currently debating whether to close my account. Someone I thought was a good close friend,obviously thinks differently about me. I could hide her but tbh, I have been spending too much time on there anyway. When I could in fact be on mn!

I love Face book because you can catch up with people and be witty. Its a great way to pass a lot of pointless time rather than being bored or doing housework!

I think it depends how you use it and the friends you choose. Generally I use it for posting up articles that interest me and discussing with others. I like the fact that you can get shot of people on FB the minute they piss you off. As a rule of thumb, I block anyone who posts or comments in a racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted way.

I don't really mind banal status updates about eating an onion bagel or walking the dog. That's life after all. :)

FB lover here, I do find it great for keeping up with friends living far away from me on a daily basis. I can do long-distance phonecalls too, they are inevitably better, but cannot afford to do that on a daily basis - besides, life now is far too busy for hour long chats every day. I don't mind the mundane status updates, just scroll right past anything that doesn't interest me. Twitter is better for info-sharing IMO, I don't really have many close friends on that, and I think Twitter takes up far more of my time than FB does because I can always find something interesting to read there. I block people's posts on FB if they are always sending out FB games notifications/requests/updates though, I find that quite annoying. No one on my FB friends list is homophobic/racist/sexist or otherwise disagreeable with me because I just don't add such people onto my friends list.

I deactivated my facebook account about 3 years ago - I found it very oppressive, obsessive, intrusive, boasty and fucking boring ...I don't want to hear that you are upset because you have just dropped your home made from scratch trifle down your 100% genuine Ugg boots and your 3 year old child has just won a place at Oxford University based purely on the fact that he has learned how to wipe his own arse ... its all bullshit

If you have friends, pick up the fucking phone and call them for a chat- don't facebook them and them just nod at them in the street ... a la my sister

I have to admit to chuckling to myself when my sister says 'oh my mate is doing blah blah blah (boasty)...I spoke to her this morning - and then we go into town and we see said friend and they don't even say hello to each other

smallwhitecat that is just my experience of facebook - I'm sure that others have a very positive view of the site but mine was ummm....not s'much so I left

My sister lives her life on fb - she logs on before she gets her kids ready for school to catch up on any gossip that she may have missed overnight - to talk about in the playground in the morning....its usually about whose children are wearing designer wear to school rather than bog standard school uniform

I'm 40 and most of my friends are on it. At the end of the day it's just another form of communication. It's strange how it can generate such strong reactions from people.

tigercametotea, I should stress that I do not knowingly add people to my friends list who are racist, sexist or homophobic. However, I have found out that people tend to be somewhat "braver" on FB, and suddenly someone who you thought was quite a nice person turns out to be a reactionary moron who believes the Daily Mail is factual.

I just don't have any friends .....its far easier

I joined fb initially because it's a great way to keep in touch with family who don't live nearby, particularly for sharing photos. I've since discovered through joining various fb groups that it's also a good way to get in touch with interesting people I would never otherwise have met: some of them I hope to meet in the future because they are fellow expats in the same country as me, or locals who are interested in similar subjects. Others I will probably never meet in RL. Some of the posts that turn up are baffling, some are fascinating. If your friends post rubbish, that says more about them than about the possibilities of fb.
Plus there is no-one nearby in RL with whom I can play Scrabble, but on fb there is always someone
NB You can opt to hide messages from games like Farmville. And if you play games yourself, you can set up the messages so that they only go to other fb friends who also play, not to everyone.

smallwhitecat, my friends who live abroad do not speak English as their first language, and have no inclination to write long emails in English. I can speak the native language but have no good ability to read emails written in that, so for me its either face-to-face or phone, but phone is expensive.

chineapplepunk, what I'm trying to say is that I don't befriend people who are like that, I drop them as friends if I find out they are that sort of people. Not a personal attack on you whatsoever.

FB has a PM facility and I think most people send individual messages through that. The actual wall page itself is used for posting articles, links, photos and general interest stuff. Well, that's certainly how I use it, but I appreciate that some people do post up highly personal stuff on their public wall, which I admit to finding rather strange.