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!

Yes and I love the photo and video-sharing ability of FB. Twitter is different though, not so good for that even though it is possible to post pictures on it.

Actually the highly-personal stuff can be quite interesting, if you're as nosey as I am . People can and will find you interesting, if they find you interesting enough as a friend, they will find you interesting if you post on FB. I think that I took about a year or so to finally get the hang of using FB and being a bit more spontaneous in what I say and not worrying so much about whether it will be popular/agreeable or not... People have dropped me as a friend before too, I'm sure they found me annoying! But so be it. Rather they know where they stand with me than continue being friends with me thinking I'm someone I'm not. And I'm not a prolific status poster... I just speak my mind.

Small, I bet they would. I tend to use it to vent. In fact, Thursday night after Question Time used to be my favourite venting time. You can get some right good old discussions going. :)

Exactly, smallcat. I refuse to believe that my life is interesting enough to others to warrant sharing it with others. This obviously doesn't apply to the majority of people though. Many people's life's are fairly mundane (we spend our time doing the same stuff generally) and I think facebook is a way for people to affirm and show that they are 'doing well' and 'suceeding', and having a ball, while the reality may be totally different.

People 'dropping' me as a friend would annoy and upset me tiger, I'm way too soft in that way and would wonder what I did to offend them, hence why I avoid it altogether.

Another reason why I came off was because I was distubingly becoming a bit of voyeur, increasingly concerned with what others were doing, a bit of a curtain twitcher. This freaked me out.

I love it for random chats and an easy informal way of keeping in touch with lots of people, both locally and far away. I don't put anything private on there, or anything about work, or play games, very rarely put photos either, so no concerns about privacy. Do get frustrated with the regular changes of settings.

I personally hate it. It is the biggest bane of the local secondary school and it has certainly caused major problems there.

FB also has ever changing site security settings. A lot of people end up getting burnt on FB and many seem to forget that what goes on the net stays on there.

I am still laughing at floof's pithy response on page one

FB can be awful in the wrong hands. But without FB those wrong hands would be screwing up in other ways. FB just gets it done quicker.

Choose your friends properly and its fine. Dont spend too much time on it and its fine.

FB doesnt make people say stupid things, people make people say stupid things (or something like that)

I love it for helpng me find people who'd become lost to me through the mists of time, for helping me to keep in contact with people that my busy every day life means I'd loose nromally.

If I find someone's to be posting banal i'll hide their feed. If I really don't like what they are saying I'll unfriend them.

and I always block all those bloody games and applications.

I'm a home educator and the home ed community used it as another communication tool, to pass on the latest in our battle with the last government and to keep up with the latest that LAs and the Department of Education are doing to us at any time.

I know the department were gobsmacked at how well linked up we were. They were not expecting that. FB was one of many things we used to great effect. Incredibly useful.

It is irritating the way they keep changing it, but considering how fickle people are, I can see that they change to keep peoples interest. I'm waiting to see how this latest change affects it.

I think the latest change to FB looks a bit suspiciously similar to Google+ though - think they are trying to beat the competition!

I like it because it has enabled me to connect with my cousins who are a lot younger than I am so I didn't spend much time with when I was younger unlike their older siblings who I know very well. For example we all love tennis and were watching Wimbledon together via Facebook. Was lots of fun and means at family get togethers I have so much more to say to them and I have a better idea what to get them for Xmas.

I like sharing photos with family and friends and seeing theirs and also being back in contact with friends I regret losing touch with. It's nice knowing what people are up to.

Yes there's a load of crap too, but the benefits outweigh all that for me.

I stopped using it a while ago, I spent far too much time playing games and getting updates on what friends cats were doing.

I just waste my time reading and posting on forums and reading blogs now

I am always amazed the amount of teacher friends i have that have students added to their page or people who have jobs were its not really ok to have your boobs out on a insecure page.

i think people can get carried way on line thinking its safer than it is

i also cannot believe the amount of people who end up getting caught cheating on face book its evil i think

Have had a good tidy up of my FB page and feel much better. Gone (well hidden, I'm not that brave) are the most banal and vacuous acquaintances along with all those game requests. Much better, all I now need to do is find a way of blocking the right wing diatribes that certain of my inlaws go in for and all will be well.

I use facebook a lot, mainly as I'm active in a couple of 'recovery from mormonism' groups, and it is the easiest way to keep in touch.

It's good for keeping in touch and sharing photos. Bad for privacy settings, strikethrough: seeing the sh*t people say and discovering people you went to school with are full on BNP supporters and staidly I added work so I strikethrough: can't bitch about it have to be professional.

Of course you can ignore friend requests and delete folk who annoy you or hide them. I deleted my husband when he annoyed me only to realise I can't keep an eye on him now.

Take it with a pinch of salt. I am back in touch with folks I thought I
managed to escape from had lost touch with. You can hide people who get on your nerves. Alot of it is rubbish but I like to know what going on.

It's like MN, not all of it is interesting to everyone but you can hide or ignore the bits that don't appeal to you. I live far away from most of my family so I find it really useful for sharing photos and keeping in touch.

I used to love FB but now with their "improvements" friends of friends can see what you post, even if your page is on the highest security settings if your friend comments on it, and I tihnk that is V wrong

Is that really true?

It is for me - anyone in that bloody annoying newsfeed - if i hover or click on what they have commented on, I can see it even if the petrson is not a friend of mine - this has been pics and status updates and so it must be able to go both ways :(

i deactivated my account permenantly cant be bothered with it i like the old fashion way a phone call or someone to pop round my house not a list of fake old faces from school who dont even talk to me its good for talking to long distance family members but apart from that i hate it. and like someone said on here there changing it so much now i like how it used to be.