... and yet you can't write them on Facebook because — given your set of Facebook friends — it would seem to refer to a particular person and you only want to make a general statement? You might be thinking about a problem or a mistake of some kind, perhaps because it's happening with someone you see on Facebook, and you'd like to say people should not do X, but you can't, because it will connect to a particular Facebook friend.
I have something like that, and I'm not going to say what it is, because I know at least some of my Facebook friends read this blog. But I thought I'd go meta, explain my plight to you, and let you use the comments here as a place where you can get your own statements out, without the problem that I have. You've got plenty of disconnection here. Is there something you see your Facebook friends doing that you haven't been able to say on Facebook because some perceived Etiquette of Facebook is stopping you?
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No, 'cause Facebook is for chicks and children. Unhelpful, I know.
The many "Am i the only person who doesn't care about the eclipse?" comments on Facebook this week reminded me of the flip side of the "oh look, sportsball" Facebook comments during the Super Bowl or World Cup. I think it is nice to be enthusiastic about things that make your friends excited and wanted to point that out, but didn't care to insult either party.
"No, really, those shorts don't make you look fat"
I've got to the point where nothing I think of writing belongs on Facebook. I write here occasionally, when the angle is intriguing and the comments interesting. Sometimes a few of my siblings and I will comment via email on some topic. I talk about current events with my kids. The friends I most enjoy discussing things with I won't on Facebook; I'll wait to hang out in person.
Happens often to me. Mostly when people post cryptic "I thought people cared about me, but today made it clear they really don't" or "I can't say anything more, but keep me in your thoughts" type posts...you know, the ones that never come across as genuine because you can go back in the person's timeline and see that they post something similar at least once a week and are only posting as a means to solicit comments, sympathy, pats on the back, and the "twenty questions" games from people trying to gossip to find out more.
The other situation is when I want to post something political, but realize that since I lean conservative/Republican, that won't be tolerated by any of my life-long liberal friends if I actually want to remain their friends.
Facebook won't allow you to write about your 'friends' behind their back.
I limit my facebook "friends" to people I know and keep it small.
Some of it is annoying and I keep blocking the Trump haters that come from sites like the Wall Street Journal which draws lefty comments like dog shit draws flies.
One section is for family and personal, not internet, friends.
I don't use the snapfaces but it's fascinating given how hostile and juvenile nearly every post or thread becomes that's theres still rules of order and etiquette being adhered to...
A chance to enrich a billionaire who hates me by giving him free content?
Hard pass.
The problem is that many people are so vain they probably think that post is about them.
Facebook is an easy vessel for Passive-Agressive Vanity.
Perhaps there could be an Althouse poll:
What are people posting their meals on Facebook REALLY saying?
I am Laslo.
Don't and won't do facebook.
Firstly, the "give/get" is a bad deal. You give all your data in exchange for a sense of connection to others.
Facebook is a veneer space, mostly focused on yourself, and not on others, and even when pointed towards others, Facebook condolences or encouragements are, in the end, only talk.
Hard to really do something positive for someone or ease someone's burden on Facebook. Easy to look like you have a charmed life. Easy to sound like you care (all from the comfort of your chair.)
Hard to actually make a difference - hard to take and carry someone's burden (like clean a kitchen while your friend takes a nap, or watch their kids while they go to visit their sick mother.)
I've never had FB and my kids and grandkids have abandoned it in favor of alternative media.
But I thought I'd go meta, explain my plight to you, and let you use the comments here as a place where you can get your own statements out, without the problem that I have.
"It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, well, what would you do?"
Happens often to me. Mostly when people post cryptic...posts
Vaguebooking.
Deleted my Facebook account over 5 years ago.
Best decision I've made in some time.
I have no advice. I have never done Facebook nor will I ever***
It seems now to be the venue for old people as the young have moved to other platforms. Full of not very deep thinkers. Full of gossip and dumb jokes. People retaliating against each other. No offense meant.
However, if your "friends" get bent out of shape because you said made some general remarks or observations (not personal or pointed revelations about individuals), then they really aren't your "friends".
*** I may break down and open a Facebook account in the near future in order to access the one set up for my high school 50 year reunion next year. But that is all.
Yes, I would say: "Why are you wasting your Life and your supposed mind reading and posting on Facebook? Talk to someone, find a good book and/or get a dog."
"I may break down and open a Facebook account in the near future in order to access the one set up for my high school 50 year reunion next year...."
Wow. I always pictured you as a twenty-something that wore short skirts with cowboy boots.
I am Laslo.
Wisdom tells me that Facebook is a Dossier which the government gets on people for free just by tempting them to show off personal data to their friends. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING FACE BOOK!
But Althouse is an opportunity to garner access to lots of intelligent and educated minds. And that ain't easy to get unless you live on a College Campus and pal around with the professors.
I'm always careful not to offend anybody.
"Facebook friends." What are those? Friends without benefits?
"since I lean conservative/Republican, that won't be tolerated by any of my life-long liberal friends if I actually want to remain their friends." Someone ought to do a study, if it hasn't been done already, of the relative tolerance of liberal and conservative FFs. Of course, no one would risk posting the main hypothesis on FB.
Women demand it.
I don't use Facebook because I would probably say inappropriate things.
I am Laslo.
A remark about Hillary's menopause button is probably not facebook material.
She probably has a reset button too.
The dilemma: honest self-expression vs. potentially hurting someone's feelings.
For some reason this made me think of Christopher Hitchens.
I am Laslo.
Are there things you're thinking of writing that seem to belong only on Facebook...
... and yet you can't write them on Facebook because... it would seem to refer to a particular person...I have something like that, and I'm not going to say what it is...
Professor-
If you want me to post more dick pics, all you have to do is ask.
Public Facebook post?
My win95 PC at work had a "Turbo" button attached to nothing, if you looked inside.
It might be a design for an early sex doll, that only seemed to apply to Hillary.
Why facebook. Are there no other body parts. Marketing opporunity.
You can't even delete your account, you can only de-activate it. Facebook became boring.
Most of my Facebooks friends are family or friends from high school and college. The latter are overwhelmingly in the fever swamp since the election. They share postings from Dan Rather or Robert Reich. I can't tell them that these people are "idiot indentifiers." Folks in their 60s don't want to be told that their worldview is completely wrong. All I can do is gently chide them from time to time. I'm waiting for an opportunity to remind them that Obama gave over $1.7 billion to Iran and that is what treason really looks like.
Oberlin in the 50s had a wolfbook, with pics and names of the freshman class, put out by the college. On the other hand, they locked up the women.
I use Facebook to keep up with relatives, colleagues, and former students. I know we don't agree about things concerning Obama and Trump so I never comment on what they post about those two--or anything political, really.
Per rhhardin: Why facebook. Are there no other body parts. Marketing opporunity.
Yes, Buttbook is more alliterative.
Confirmation bias is big these days.
If you know the other guy, you know his confirmation bias.
You don't say stuff that will trigger confirmation bias of the other guy, if you don't want to change the relationship.
Without knowing the full context it's impossible to offer a useful opinion. But I guess in an ideal world, if a person has a problem with the way another person is behaving, they should first try talking to this person privately rather than in a public way. In many cases it's better to try being direct than to resort to publicly shaming them or being passive-aggressive. Of course it's easy to say all that... but I personally haven't always follow that peace of advice.
I don't DO facebook. Don't trust them.
I pretty much follow ken in tx pattern.
My kids post pictures. Most friends are pro-Trump except a couple of my kids.
I haven't "unfriended" anyone over politics and am unaware of any doing it to me.
Don't discuss bus schedules.
Spies are everywhere.
If a friend is making a mistake or experiencing a problem, maybe they should read something that reminds them of their situation. A more passive approach would be to try to Google an article somewhere that says what you want to say (or something close) and post a link to that article instead of writing it yourself.
Jim Lehrer is into bus schedules. Check his facebook page, if he has one.
Facebook is an echo chamber.
It started as a teen thing, competing well with MySpace (which Murdoch stupidly bought).
Then Facebook killed off the youngsters by gaining all the oldsters. I was part of that. I introduced Facebook to most of the members I know. Then I quickly stopped using it, because it became a mob. An oldster mob.
I still have a Facebook account, because it's a useful test of what's going on out there. Oldsters and wannabees.
Facebook, the company, should have a good middle-term future, because the populace is growing old and too dense to know that Facebook is a parasitic horror. It will eat you alive.
I could have recently written a Facebook post saying, "Hey friends on Facebook. Not a good idea to overshare about this new person you are dating. That's a bad, bad idea for so many reasons."
I have given up fb, except for family. I wish I could tell my younger girl cousins to stop posting so many selfies. It makes them look desperate. But that's kind of the opposite of your problem. I'd like to post something generally and hope they think I'm talking about them.
Since I'm not in AZ, but the vast majority are, I decided to check out my actual feed to see if the Trump rally was as big a deal as the media made it out to be. None of my Mexican friends or family posted anything about it. No one else did either, except a couple of acactivi lefties. I kind of wanted to point out their privilege, but resisted. Just found it funny that a bunch of well enough off white people are protesting Donald Trump while the Mexicans who do probably have illegal family members could care less.
Laslo Wow. I always pictured you as a twenty-something that wore short skirts with cowboy boots
Well, that was flattering...I hope :-)
I am one year older than Althouse and have mentioned it before on this blogs comments. I say you are as young as you feel, think and keep yourself in shape. I think I'm 30.
Yes person of interest mused about that, there's an interesting piece about Facebook in of all things the London review of books by John lanchester
I had a Facebook account until this spring when my account was closed by Facebook. The explanation was that I had been reported as impersonating someone else. Interesting, since it was myself I was apparently impersonating. Someone hacked my account and sent out friending messages to those I had already friended--you know, those messages with the little ghost person pictured rather than the picture of the actual person. One would have thought all my friends would have recognized it as fake, but someone notified Facebook and they closed my account. I spent about two days arguing with a machine via email to no avail. I had the account so that I could keep in contact with former college roommates, high school friends, children and grandchildren. I'll admit that after the initial disgust with Facebook's action, there was a sense of relief that I would no longer have to--even for a fleeting moment--see the political anger and angst that was posted daily before and after the election. I miss the personal updates, though, from family and friends.
Happens often to me. Mostly when people post cryptic "I thought people cared about me, but today made it clear they really don't"
God I hate those kind of people. Just say it damn it. They always want to lure you into asking questions. I just cut them off. Like so:
-I feel so bad today.
-Oh, why is that?
-I just do.
-Okay. Sorry to hear that. Bye.
I don't do facebook, I don't need to, my family/friends use other platforms. I'm not giving Zuckerprick a dime.
'Images for cinderella backwards' googled. I've saved a pic, am afraid to post.
It's not etiquette that keeps me from posting stuff in FB. It's not wanting to take the time & energy required to slap some sense into so many of those guys. It's not what folks post is so extreme, it's that it's so dumb. I know these people. They're smarter than this.
The sappy, candy-box Jesus stuff from many of my Southern acquaintances doesn't really bother me. It's well-meant, & simply a naive expression of a genuine faith, both personally & socially. But, it's so dull.
The lefties, on the other hand, make the "Krist-chans" look like party animals in their sanctimony. And the links are always to some on-line screed for the hard-lefties or, for the moderates, the New York Times. A link to The New Republic, The Nation, or to an article by a genuinely intelligent but lefty scholar is rare.
Yeah, cryptic Facebook posts, where the person hints at what they want to say without actually saying it, are the worst.
Facebook isn't a blog.
Is the "particular person" Donald Trump? In that case use an allegory. You'll have to create an alternate reality and characters.
I solve any potential Facebook problems by refusing to join Facebook. If I have to use Facebook to post a comment--for example--I simply don't comment. Not every pleasure is worth the price.
My sister-in-law is a paranoid right-wing nutcase. No conspiracy is too outlandish for her not to subscribe to. Vaccinations, chem trails, New World Order, the Roman Catholic church, you name it. If it runs contrary to conventional wisdom, she's there.
When I make an exhaustively reasoned, elegantly phrased, orthodox conservative Facebook post I live in fear that she will show up, and while supporting my post, make conservatives sound like just the whacko stereotype the left wingers want us to be.
What do I do about it? Nothing. I like her. She's a nice person. If I wrote a post about the paranoid style she'd know it was about her and the resulting tumult would never end.
On the plus side, it's only Facebook. I don't pretend my posts, exhaustive and elegant though they may be, are changing anyone's mind. They mostly serve as a means for me to clarify to myself what I believe. Beyond that, I'm just preaching to the choir.
My wife recently complained that her Facebook feed is nothing but "Minions and opinions".
I think that sums it up pretty well!
Don't do Facebook.
And if you must, just post kid, cat and vacation pictures.
Neither one of the two reasons I stay on Facebook prevents me from posting whatever nonsense I like, no.
All of you who eschew using Facebook, why wouldn't you want to see your friends from your youth get old, fat, and bald? Oh...oh...never mind.
I regularly deny myself the pleasure of ranting on social media about kids using tablets and smartphones.
I will never, never, ever buy your shitty MLM products and I think you are a total asshole for trying to use your "friends" to make money.
Pants, Amen!
LOL, Pants. Yeah, that too sometimes.
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