Don’t be like Alice and Timmy, and don’t say I haven’t warned you (h/t The Daily Beast)! This video actually has some good advice for those of you who insist on using the “electric friendship generator” despite your Auntie Historiann’s warnings. A friend of mine in her 40s recently confided in me that she got way into Facebook last year, but then decided it was “like the guy you slept with Freshman year right away and then decided was just embarrassing so you spent the rest of your college years avoiding him.” She discovered just how boring most people are, and what shocking amounts of time they spend on Facebook to convey extremely tedious information.
After all: that’s what blogs are for!
Historiann 
FB is now at 200 million users. It must be doing something right.
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Can anyone get some firm numbers on pet rock and mood ring consumption, back in the day ? They were apparently doing something right as well….at the time.
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Just reminded me to check my facebook page š
I check it every day or so, post much less often — partly because I’m fairly careful about what I post. Like most things, it depends on how you use it.
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Well, I just hope you mind your manners, Susan! Alice’s and Timmy’s tale is a lesson for you all.
And Fratguy: don’t you know that everything new and shiny is teh awesumm on teh interwebs? It’s digitize and computerized, so it must be good! I’m sure we’ll all be mad Facebook freaks 35 years from now. (Aren’t you still wearing Hammer pants and a rattail?) Facebook totally obviates the need for actual contact with actual humans–who can complain about that?
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Facebook totally obviates the need for actual contact with actual humans
Historiann, have you even looked at facebook? I wouldn’t bother to defend it (like Susan) if you didn’t toss out totally unwarranted snark. Facebook offers me much more contact with people who I missed from my life—for example, I know my cousins-across-the-continent a little bit better after only a month on FB and will know them better still as time passes; I am seeing more pix of the children of my grad school friends and posting pix of my life; and I am actually remembering to tell people happy birthday.
Facebook “friendships” are essentially the equivalent of seeing people from a different department in the hallway every couple of weeks and stopping to chat. No, that’s not a particularly deep form of human contact, but it has an accumulative effect, and it’s not nothing. Layered on top of pre-existing real friendships weakened by not living in the same town any more, it’s much more than nothing.
And Alice being a total idiot has very little to do with Facebook specifically and much more to do with the internet/text messaging/digitization in general (admittedly, the Timmy “single” message that set her off is all Facebook’s fault).
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Oh, dance–lighten up! If you dig Facebook and find it useful–as most of my friends apparently do–then enjoy! Whatever.
Who cares what someone anonymous jerk on the world-wide non-peer reviewed self-published internets thinks?
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Oh, it’s not that I feel judged by you or anything. Rather, I hate to see someone (whose blog I consistently read and enjoy) making stupid and illogical claims apparently out of ignorance.
(also, you are not anonymous and are barely pseudonymous)
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“Stupid and illogical?” Please review the comments policy here, which states that insults are not permitted. You mentioned in your previous comment that you understood my comment as “snark,” which it was.
Like I said, lighten up! I know that I’m not anonymous–I’m suggesting that people shouldn’t get upset because one person has a different opinion about Facebook. I didn’t realize that Facebook was now a religious or even a sacramental experience and that it was inappropriate to joke around about it.
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Apologies. One of the reasons I’m a professor is that I react with dismay to people making claims with no basis in reality, on any topic. Your comment to Fratguy suddenly went from exaggerating to totally off-base, in my view—and I tend to expect even snark to have a little kernel of truth at the base.
I’m happy and entertained to see you hate on Facebook for problems that really exist.
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Classy, dance–super classy. I, of course, am the kind of professor who makes all kind of “claims with no basis in reality.”
I am sorry you didn’t find my joking around with Fratguy amusing. I’ll be sure to run all of my comments by you from now on to make sure they meet your standards.
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Gizmodo linked this video with a few other PSAs, but from the classic MST3K (which mocked them relentlessly): http://i.gizmodo.com/5219679/and-now-a-facebook-public-service-announcement
I’m still in the middle of the first of these, and can’t stop laughing.
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MST3K–wow, that’s a blast from the past! And a welcome one, too. Thanks for the link.
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I just checked on the on-line version of the _William and Mary Quarterly_ and on the sidebar it says “visit us on Facebook.” Being a (in this case very) late-adopter, I can’t even imagine what that set of words means or signifies, to put it semiotically. You can visit a journal on Facebook? Is it the same experience as visiting them on JSTOR, or are there some cool other things you can do during your visit? I’m always happy when the kids have their own little games and pastimes to amuse them. It gets weird when established enterprises and institutions jump on the bandwagon. (There was an article yesterday about a 70 year old chief executive who “had a Facebook page before his daughter did, which is an e-version of man bites dog, I guess). On the other hand, until I started hanging around here a year ago, I thought blogging was kind of weird. So: visit Indyanna on Facebook, one of these years…
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Re: Traction. I shoulda used their legendary fact-checkers: I looked again, and it actually says “join us on Facebook” which I guess may signify somewhat differently than visit us. Revise and resubscribe!
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@Indyanna writes “Is it the same experience as visiting them on JSTOR” – LOL
@ historiann – wish I’d seen this video when I was having my rather serious rant about social network sites this week. Would have been inappropriate in the context I was ranting, but definitely fitting in general.
PS. McCain is on twitter. I look forward to your snark about twits, oops, I mean tweets
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Twitter–yet another way of using computers or text messaging to avoid doing real work? I figured Twitter jumped the shark when the Senior Citizens at NPR started inviting “tweets.” (Even Daniel Schor (?) who’s in his 90s is supposedly “twittering.” I guess it’s a good thing to try to reach out to a younger audience.)
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Historiann, a very belated apology. Mea Culpa. I was exceedingly rude on your blog and I am sorry.
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No problem, dance–thanks for your comment above. I hope your semester ended well & that you’re looking forward to a nice, relaxing, and productive summer (if that’s what you’re looking for.)
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