Sunday, August 31, 2008
Request from your Luddite friend:
If you receive a Facebook "friend" request from me, PLEASE feel free to ignore it. You won't hurt my feelings. I responded to one I received (setting up a Facebook account in the process) because I didn't want to hurt somebody else's feelings. So...since I have no experience with this sort of thing, can y'all please explain to me the advantages of participating in this? Do I really need another way to get sucked into the internet for hours at a time? I would appreciate all explanations and comments, pro and con.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
That's just like what happened to me when I signed up for Tagged. I don't get the benefit of these sites either.
I haven't ventured into facebook yet...may not ever...so, I am of no help.
It can certainly suck up your time if you let it. The cool thing for me has been connecting with some people from my past, especially old college friends, that I would not have otherwise. (The Clifford Atari story on my blog is one such example.) It is just one more source of mindless entertainment.
I figure if people from my past really want to find me, they can Google me. I'm not on Facebook. Several friends who are on it say that it's a huge time-sucker. So, unless someone who outranks me at work decides I need to be on it for job purposes, I'm not signing up. Lots of people are surprised that I'm not, but I'm still not.
I'm still deciding. But I will say that I really like the coming together of friends from past lives. And reconnecting with former work pals. That is a good thing.
Just gotta watch the time suckage.
If you don't want to be on facebook, don't be on it. I am now, and you are right, it can be a major time suck.
however...
I found an old friend from college, who I haven't been in touch with for a long time.
She has cancer.
I got on facebook for the same reason I have a myspace page out there somewhere - to save the name. Myspace bores the holee crap outta me , except for finding my probies on it . That's a hoot.
Facebook is only slightly more interesting. I spend about two minutes on it at a time, which is plenty to keep up with what little I do there. I'm way all 'meh' about it.
How's that for unhelpful? (Oh, and I 'friended' you. Just 'cause I wanted to!)
I enjoy it...It's fun to play games like Scramble with friends...it's fun to read the one line news...I don't (unsurprisingly) post dozens of pictures or keep a great web of connections going all the time the way my kids do, but it's a harmless way of being loosely in touch, specially if blogging energy is low.
I like the word games, the pictures from family and friends, and reading the status sentences. The word games are probably the one I spend the most time in terms of time suck.
i've resisted the whole Facebook thing as well. The one social networking site that I use is LinkedIn--it's strictly business-oriented, and I've got back in touch with quite a few people as a result.
I'm not anywhere but here.
Glad to hear from you in comments this week! Thanks!
I have facebook and myspace. mmmeeeehhhhh to either. They are alright but I think I am just too old.
I just got facebook a few weeks ago because an internet preaching group that I've belonged to forever was forming a group there too. Okay, so, I agree with everyone else-- it's easy to sit for way too long reading people's pages and playing games and sending flair. And it's really fun to do that for awhile. But I'm already backing off a bit. Plusses are re-connecting with my best friend from 4th grade and sharing stories about swimming together, and jumping on her trampoline, and her neighbor's mean dog that bit me; also reconnecting with seminary friends who I haven't talked to in 15 years. You can't beat that. It's also cool to be "friends" with my 75-year-old seminary New Testament Professor, who I'm apparently now allowed to call Charlie.
I think you should do it. You know how to manage your time.
Since I blog under a pseudonym, I enjoy having some internet venue in which I appear as myself. Also, since I've move so much and had so many different communities over time, it's been really intersting to have representatives from all those times and place on on--er--page, so to speak.
But you can get sucked in, that's for sure.
Post a Comment