Reasons I dumped Facebook. Add yours.

I'm not on Facebook anymore because:

* I don't really want to know about your weird neighbor who does strange things to cats with a fork.

* Pictures of you at the beach with the beer gut and beer hat are not what I live to see.

* I don't care about your Hot Cheetos addiction.

* I miss the days when chatting meant real face-time with people I have a lot in common with and centered on topics that didn't invite a bombastic attitude.

* I don't want to know about your shitty day at work: Anyone who is still employed had a similar shitty day at work.

* I don't need to hear that your cousin's daughter, who I'll never know, is on her way to the state soccer championship.

* I've seen enough pictures of your tony lifestyle and got over being jealous about it months ago.

* I'm not happy seeing that a lot of my old friends are morbidly obese and have lost their hair.

* I've made myself ill writing countless twee comments on your wall and haven't gotten a single response.

* I'm tired of writing something of relevance on my wall, getting no response ever, then looking at your wall and seeing that 25 people gave a thumbs-up review of the you-tube video you posted of the guy who can do the hand-fart thing to the William Tell Overture.

* I never want to have to a handle a psycho ex-girlfriend stalking me on FB by pretending to be my dad and posting, "Our son is in an alcoholic coma somewhere in the Bowery."

* Yes, I can definitely acknowledge that you think that Obama is: The anti-christ, a dumb-ass, not a U.S. citizen, and is incompetent for not personally donning a diving suit to blast a cap on the MF'ing oil well in the Gulf.

* I don't want to remember the time we got drunk on Boone's Farm wine and left purple puke stains all over the outside of my car.

* I don't want to see pictures of your beautiful wife and kids when I can't even get laid.

* So what if you now have two billion Farmville points.

* I don't want to take another survey on "Best rock songs EVAH."

* I can't sleep either. Let's try turning off our computers and making the room dark.

for MANY of the reasons you mention!!!!


Good list. I will add "I don't want to get in the middle of a family dispute being carried out over facebook."

that is all it took for me.

one time, i went in to look at this gals pictures, because of her urging. for months afterwards i was getting emails from strangers wanting me to be friends, post on walls, and look at messages. clueless and didnt care.

they can damn well email them to me....lazy fucks

I'm 'friends' there with a lot of people, but I only follow people I actually like. I've hidden those that I don't know well, or who get on my nerves by always posting stupid stuff. I've hidden the surveys, and the quizzes, and I hide the games as soon as I see them. I rarely post anything there, unless there's something specific I want to say to someone.

So really, facebook is a way for me to keep up with people I actually like and want to know about, even the ones who are now fat and/or bald or who have kids that play soccer. The rest of it can magically disappear if you want it to. Or, you can come to an internet message board and gripe about another internet message board.

:cry: Even I offered you a gallon of crude oil I found somewhere! Now all my apples are rotten!

:blush:

It's nice that Megan Fox 'luvs' you, though. :D :hi:

:woohoo:

:rofl: :hi:

i don't play games, and I hide all applications, and some people who post too much. It's just a nice tool for me to keep track of my friends who are all ranging across the world right now

then it wouldn't be so frustrating for them.

:evilgrin:

i only have 50 friends = really almost all family. I hide and or ignore all kinds of stuff...I do love Farmville!

:D

why are you on DU? :)

I figured if I want to know what's going on with your life I'll give you a phone call or we'll hang out for a beer - something like that.

"It's sad. After 911, the British were the first (and almost only-thanks again France) ally to support the US troops with troops of their own, even though it was a risky and very controversial decision on the part of Blair. For that reason I have been a BP supporter ever since. I'm willing to give them a chance to fix their mistake before totally writing them off."

Dumb people: that's my reason.

which was always, "I'm watching Hilary Clinton right now, and she is such a dumbass."

But yeah, the friend you mentioned needs to get a ticket on the clue bus. He'd be more honest to at least call Blair's acquiescence "calculated."

I was waking up in the middle of the night lamenting my seeming lack of ability to keep in touch with people, and FB has relieved that anxiety to a great extent.

when we live all over the country.

mainly in the interest of humor and to vent frustration. I see I should probably keep my day job and not try to become a full time humorist.

keeps us updated on their travels and what is going on. So do my cousins spread up and down the east coast.

Its a tool. Not good not bad just what you make of it.

don't have an account and refuse all offers to join others

because most of the people I actually see posts from don't post a lot of the crap you're bitching about.

I also blocked all the Farmville and other applications I don't care about, such as surveys on the "Best rock songs EVAH".

Contrary to what you think, not everyone who's employed always has a shitty day. I don't (though I do have more than my share these days thanks to the Illinois state budget). And my friends don't bitch about their days all the time.

Anyone who thinks Obama is the anti-Christ is not one whose posts I ever see.

And the people I would chat with are those I don't live anywhere near and can't see on a regular basis, so chatting is a great way to stay in touch - and we have a good deal in common and have great discussions.

Not to be a jerk, but...your apparent inability to reasonably manage your FB account is no reason for me to disable mine. :shrug:

intended to be loungey, tongue-partially-in-cheek, and certainly not intended for such myopic scrutiny. Half of what I wrote I did so based not on what I've actually experienced on FB (well some of it is non-fiction) but as a way to express an overall frustration of going through some real, painful social alienation at this juncture of my life. And though some obviously will read this post and think it sophomoric at best, I am not so daft that I didn't figure out to hide this and that on FB.

Take a hike.

I apparently completely misread the tone of your post.

While you're dealing with your own issues, I suspect my own stresses at this point may have prompted a harsher than necessary response - which is no excuse.

Again, my apologies.

It was cathartic to do my lame list which also may have had some neg-head over-tones. I'm a teacher who just had a shit year and started summer break so I'm in the process of: 1) Detoxing, and
2) Looking for something to do. I've been hyper-oversensitive because of all of the shit I put up with at school this year, so sorry about my snipe.

Good luck with your own stresses.

and maybe I'm way off, but do some of your friends behave differently on FB than when you talk to them in person? That's another reason I had to sign off. I'm talking about the wall in particular. It's such a public way to communicate, and I had friends writing such phony shit on my wall, their own walls, other walls of people I had friended. Either the content or style of writing was like nothing like I'd encountered in phone conversations.

Not saying I won't but so far so good.

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...that show how I ruined Facebook for you...
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...but everyone else is kinda cool.
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Just call me CallMeWesley's one bad apple.
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Tony lifestyle? I could guess, but I'd rather ask

pretty damn well. Making good internet friends is worth it to me. I like it better than I do the lounge actually. No Mods...:evilgrin:

.....:thumbsup:......

I think it's a good way to keep in touch with friends I don't get to see in person as often as I'd like.

You anti-FB types have a real condescending twit vibe going. Don't like FB? Fine. Just quit and then shut the fuck up about it.

Just guessing.

hide games, block quizzes. If someone is relentlessly boring, hide that person.

I have hidden and/or blocked at least 50 apps, and two friends.

For a number of reasons, one being I'd screw up and confuse my professional life and my personal life at some point, I just know it. Another is I like everybody a little but very few enough to want to know too much about them. And I'm just not that interesting, or rather, my interests are better pursued off the internet for the most part.

I'm not a Facebook hater though, my husband and kids enjoy it, as do most of my peers.

I'm talking about getting carried away with putting too much of yourself out there, and then having that fall into the wrong hands. This happened to me. A colleague / friend of mine had another colleague of mine over to her house and at some point they got on line, on FB. My friend left the room and my other colleague, who I really don't like or trust, got onto my FB page and read a few things that were posted there that I really wish she had not seen. It didn't amount to much in the long run, but I certainly didn't endear myself to this person as a result (not that I had been trying).

There were many times when I actually enjoyed it and there are a few people I miss. But I got friended by too many people I no longer had anything in common with. Does anyone know how to join back up but start all over on friending people I really want to keep up with? Or do you have to join back up and unfriend a bunch of people?

You have to refriend everyone..I've known several people who did this...

But I've befriended so many news feeds, that I go there for extra news.

There was one friend I knew almost 30 years ago when we were on the same kibbutz. But he's turned cristo-nutter and started regurgitating feigned hate radio rants. I unfriended him. Are people notified when they've been given the cold shoulder of death?

People I knew in college, or thought I knew at least, had done a 180 in various areas of their lives. Freaked me out a little. But I'm an immature guy (have to be... I teach kids all day) so I have never really grown up.

I think people you unfriend just notice that you are no longer on their friends list.

And this is someone with around 300 friends. I have about 30 and haven't the foggiest if anyone is leaving. So I engaged the ol' blockeroo.

:loveya: :headbang: :yourock:

I have mixed feelings reading your post. On one hand I agree with most of the remarks, on the other, there are certain useful aspects to Facebook that have definitely improved my life, but like anything else it must be used cautiously and with moderation lest it produce more ill effects than good.

The Bad:
Like you, I really don't care about the boring minutiae of people's lives. Some people post such inane, pointless stuff that my reaction is always "Who cares?" My sister in law, for instance, is the queen of banal updates. "Coffee then going for a run" is about what she posts, each and every single day. My philosophy is to never post an update that isn't witty, interesting or funny. I am humble enough to realize that I am no more significant than anyone else. There's a lot of people posting irrelevant crap on FB that's of no benefit to anyone other than their own sense of self-importance.

I also don't like when people show off how great their lives are. One example is a girl I knew in high school who writes about how she lives in sunny California where the temperature is always nice, she has a big house, etc. "I must have done something good in a former life," she brags. Screw you, you married a rich guy; I doubt you racked up good karma

Everyone including me has to deal with some whack job friends/family spouting crap they don't agree with whether politics, religion, baseball or something else. I don't respond to them, but choose to let my pointed refusal to ever comment or "like" anything they say which I disapprove of to speak for itself. No, I'm not so thin-skinned that I want to dump people who post things I find offensive, but it does put a damper on my relationship with them.

You have to be very careful with your privacy settings lest you reveal too much information to the world. You can never put up a picture or a post that you wouldn't want everyone, past present and future, to see. I have a 90 year old Aunt and before posting anything I ask myself "What would Aunt Mary think if she saw this?" Granted, this might be a bad example since she used to tell some pretty ribald jokes, but you get the idea. You can NEVER spout off about your employer or a friend since you're in full public view, so it's not really possible to "be yourself" sometimes.

Similarly, the applications on Facebook are all idiotic and I don't use any of them - just a way to grab more data from my profile. I also despise being hit with ads for stuff I'm interested in (Rolling Stones for instance) but understand this stuff is part of what keeps free sites free.

The chat option (on by default) can be annoying, I'll freely admit. I turn it off since I just don't usually have the time to chat with people who grab me if I'm checking FB then going up to dinner or something.

The Farmville/Mafia Wars stuff is useless but can be hidden, so I don't worry about that.

I made the mistake of friending some people at work on FB, and have regretted it with the exception of one coworker I would now actually call a friend from being connected with him on FB. It's too entangling and if someone leaves my company it can be uncomfortable (especially since I work in IT and shut off all access/accounts for departed users). I would like to defriend all coworkers with the exception of the one useful friend, but know FB will immediately start prompting them to add me back as a friend, meaning they will ask why I defriended them. I'm OK with saying "I no longer feel it's a good idea to connect with coworkers on FB," but the problem is the one exception I left in place which would refute that.

Sometimes Facebook has a "too much information" feel to it. Like most other people, I've looked up old friends and ex girlfriends
(. Some of what I've seen has been distressing. One old girlfriend of mine turned out to basically have had a crap life since I broke up with her; depressed, not in good health, divorced, and not really any more mature than when I'd seen her last over a dozen years before. To me that seemed like something I probably could and should have gone on without knowing.

The Good:

Facebook has allowed me to keep in much better contact with many friends and family, and also get to know some people better. My wife has a huge family, most of whom are on FB, so I've really learned a lot about them since I've been on FB. Similarly, it's a way for me to have daily interactions with friends who live far away. I've had long-lost friends and family members turn up that I probably wouldn't have encountered if not for FB. That's been very surreal.

Facebook provides a single dashboard glance at what everyone is doing and allows me to avoid having to keep in separate contact via email and phone (the latter of which I never have time for).

It's a good way to share photos of my kids with my parents and my wife's parents.

People in my field whom I am friends with post interesting and useful things which are good to know about.

I'll admit it's gratifying to post something and see that several people liked it or it sparked a good discussion. That could be seen as a bad thing for some if the reverse applied, but for me it's rewarding.

Overall I think that for me the good outweigh the bad, so long as FB doesn't become too much of a time-waster nor do I have to wade through too much irrelevance or intrusions on the part of FB.

another reason I left. I suppose I could get back on and just be cut-throat about who I friend and who is "off the island."

My mom called the other day to ask me about FB. Her grand-daughter had sent her an e-mail inviting her to join, or so my mom thought. She called Em up and it turns out Em never did send such an e-mail. How in the hell did FB get my mom's e-mail address? This is another thing I don't like about it. How much access to your computer does FB actually have?

You might run into humorless people there.

}(

keep up with our nephews. I now regret it. So many of old friends are right-wing Jesus Freaks. I got so sick of their posts. A friend told me how to hide them so I don't have to read their crap. I really just don't get that much out of it. I need to figure out how to close my account.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7MuwPlOiNQ


Cracks me up, every time!