Okay, this is a whole new version. Had to be done.
What happened was, I figured out how to make Facebook do the only thing I wanted it to do, the one thing I’d been trying to make it do ever since I signed up six months ago. The arrangement isn’t as straightforward as I’d like, amounting to a work-around from my point of view, but then nobody asked me. Though I wasn’t wrong about the Facebook glitches with my “friends” list, I’ve left that issue tangled in the weeds and moved on. So now, if I still have any friends left, I’ll actually be able to see what they have to say if I drop by. That much is a relief. That I tried in vain to get help from Facebook, Google, and the entrails of a wandering minstrel is probably as much my “fail” as Facebook’s and also as charitable as this post is going to get.
By the way, my inspiration came after I gave up and decided to take a hot bath. This did more good than all the bytes in China, more than all the hits on Google, way more than all the anquished, wailing posts on Twitter and Facebook about how the FaceBorg was out to get me, etc. etc. I just gave up and took a bath I didn’t need, before the sun went down even, and boom, it came to me. Now that is a minor miracle.
But poor old Facebook, I dunno. It turns me off for all the reasons this straight-A student hated high school, and then there are the grownup issues.
What I dislike most is the infernal “friends” business: how many you supposedly have, who’s a friend and who isn’t, who’s a friend but not a really good friend, who’s allowed to see certain things and who isn’t, and so on. One can create or join all these groups, clubs, lists, events, fans, and I don’t know what all. The manipulation is obvious, making you reload pages constantly inside the domain. Most people don’t care, but I’ve aways hated “web portals” — something about being fenced in, I guess. The enforced regimentation is insulting. It’s so reductive. It sucks the air out of my lungs. It’s like meeting all your friends in a church basement — with advertising! But I ignore the common pleasures of everyday life, the shared joys and pains, the opportunity to say “hi,” that make us feel more human, right? So Facebook isn’t evil, if you want that kind of thing and don’t mind white formica and folding metal chairs. It’s just the story of my life: I always wanted to be part of the gang, but I hardly ever wanted to do what the gang thought was cool.
So then, why not just come here? There’s plenty of room. Okay, I’m running a few ads, but any loot goes to me, not a steenking corporation. Anyway, if you’re my friend, you can always depend on me to keep you close to my heart, and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Facebook.
So there.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank the holy bejeezsuses! Somebody else with the same experience and same opinion as me about Facebook! The high-school clique analogy is as perfect as they come (coincidence that Facebook is so popular with that age group?) and it drives me NUTS that everything anybody could want (hell… MORE than they’ll probably EVER want) to know about me and what I’m doing is at my own website, for Goddess’ sake! How many points of entry do we need?! Thanks Juan. Feels good to have some company here, and makes me feel less like some old fart yelling “You kids get off my lawn!”
Oddly, I think I may have had an inspiration for fixing what I was trying to do in Facebook, no thanks to them, of course. But I still despise it with great relish!
And I’m probably wrong about my solution working, anyway.
Your comment parallels what happened last time, you’ll want to know. People came out of the freaking woodwork to say “THANK GOD somebody else feels this way,” etc. So there are a lot of people out there feeling left out and diminished for no good reason.
There are ways to set Facebook up to help drive traffic, of course. Notice of every new post at this blog goes out to both Twitter and Facebook, which together account for about 10% of the visitor traffic. Obviously, that could be more.
I’ll write more about Twitter soon. That’s something I think you’d like, actually.
THANK GOD somebody else feels this way. I’m going back into the woodwork now. John
Don’t worry: if you think Facebook is terrible, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.
…but what about Farmville and Mafia Wars? You don’t offer anything that compelling.
Think I’ll just keep up with you here. Stay the course.
Exactly, already said my piece about the freakiness of FB….it’s like those all inclusive resorts and cruises, enforced merriment. Makes me want to bite something. BUT- hot bath’s are always a good way to solve the unsolvable…..in the asylum era they called it hydrotherapy…. works for me.
jlm, thanks!
Rebecca, yes. I’m positively addicted to hot baths. I couldn’t live in a house without a big bathtub.
thought you might get a kick out of this facebook factoid….
http://www.necn.com/Boston/SciTech/2009/09/16/Facebook-300-million-people/1253103375.html
Checking out pictures of women, figures…
But don’t believe the “300 million” figure. A huge chunk of that are inactive accounts. What the number represents are all the people who have ever signed up. It’s evidently very hard to completely obliterate all your data. In fact, the process takes a couple of weeks. (You can “deactivate” your account, but that’s not at all the same thing.)