Should I get into Facebook?

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I was posting a lot here a couple of months ago, but have since been kinda busy, so I've been on hiatus.

Anyway, I come back here, seeking like-minded opinions on whether I should get involved with the mess that is Facebook.

Really, I suppose it's less a question of if, and more a matter of when (so, the answer, in my mind is, get it over with, but I'm still afraid of it, so that's why I'm talking about it here). In my job, I work with a lot of people who are roughly 4-8 years younger than me. They act as though it's almost unthinkable that I'm not on Facebook. Clearly, Facebook is a prevalent phenomenon of proportions precedented only by communication tools such as cell phones and the Internet itself. I realize that, much as I may wish to resist it, Facebook has become one of the world's primary means of communication. I'm socially handicapped enough as it is, and considering I communicate more comfortably through computers than in person, Facebook seems like a perfect tool for me.

All the same, I'm not comfortable with the concept of all of my friends and acquaintances being in one place. I've lived in a lot of places, and I also have a number of friends on the Internet. For some reason I'm paranoid about say, people from one state I've lived in, seeing who I know in another state. Or my Internet friends seeing who I know in real life, or vice-versa. Or what about my parents? They aren't on Facebook, but my mom frequently uses the Internet to snoop around for new info and photos of people we've known in the past. I cringe at the thought of my mom having access to pages of my group of friends and saying, "I can't believe so and so did blah blah blah," or some such. She can be a bit judgmental and I feel really uncomfortable with criticisms of my friends. Or, what if they aren't people I really consider friends, but I just know them, and they're on my list? I don't like that, when looking at a list of "friends," people wouldn't know how closely I associate with this person or that person, or if someone might take my association with this person or that person as a poor reflection of me. Really, I just don't know enough about how people think and judge. I fear that they might make a big deal out of stuff, so I tread overly cautiously just in case they do. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me secluded.

Yes, I want to catch up with old friends from high school and before. And while I'm pretty good at being alone, I'm tired of involuntary loneliness. As a poster here, I do want to be alone a lot, but most people probably have no idea that I am as lonely as I really am, or if they do, they probably assume that I always want to be alone. In today's world, it seems to me that not being on Facebook is completely socially unacceptable.

The other thing is the obligation. If you get involved, there's no backing out. Do I friend everyone I know? Do I have to post a lot? What are the social parameters of the site, and what do people normally do there? Is it OK to not friend someone who sent a request? Is it OK to not always reply to someone who tries to communicate with you too much? I know that tons of people turn Facebook into a huge timesink, and I don't want that to happen to me.

I don't think of myself as a paranoid person, but I guess this is nothing but paranoia. Really, I'm pretty good at avoiding things that accentuate my flaws, so if I'm paranoid about something like Facebook, I generally avoid it. All the same, a communication tool like Facebook could be a really positive thing for me. That's what I hope, of course, but I'm confronting my fears here so that I may be able to benefit from it. With Facebook's prevalence in the world today, I feel this is something I have to deal with sooner or later.

Anyway, I guess I've more or less spilled my thoughts on Facebook (or what I know about it, anyway). What do people around here think of Facebook? Do you like it? Do you hate it? Has it been a valuable social tool that works well for you and your unusual ways of thinking and interacting? Has it affected you in a positive way, opening doors that you would have otherwise kept shut? I'm very curious to hear what the Wrong Planet community has to say about it.

no.

If you have all those reservations, probably best not to get involved with Facebook.

I enjoy Facebook. I friended my mother and my sister and a lot of cousins and uncles. Also people I know from school, people I know from where I used to live, and even some people who I never heard of before (if they try to friend me and know a lot of the other people I'm friended with, I usually add them. If we don't share any friends in common and they don't give a message telling me who they are and why they want to friend me, I usually ignore them.

But Facebook is probably not for everybody. If you are unsure, maybe you wouldn't enjoy it.

I'm on Facebook and really open, but you don't need to be. Just because somebody asks is not a mandate to friend anybody. I have not friended people I thought would be damaging or were marketeers. You can set all kinds of privacy levels.
I love Facebook because I can see my grandchildren's photos and get a sense of what is going on in their far off lives. I can find out which people in church are having a rough time and might need some help.
If you do get on Facebook, you need to be careful what you say. Don't write anything you don't want your mother or future boss to see. You don't ever need to write anything. I post maybe once a month. Sometimes less. You can send private messages that only the person you message sees. Unless they quote you of course, so again, be careful.
Most of us older people only friend relatives. I friend lots of writers and people who look like they would be interested in the books I am e publishing soon.

It's okay but I am not all for social engineering. I made my own personal website. That way friends can visit when they want.

Facebook can be bad for vulnerable people especially if you are putting personal details and home address online, then I think you are putting your personal safety on the line.

I got onto Facebook and even though I put very minimal personal information on and made everything including my profile picture viewable only to friends, and I registered with a fake surname, I still got really paranoid over it and ended up deleting my account.

I've written some "rules" for myself and my face book account, because I don't want to find myself wrapped up in the "high school" aspect of it. As a way of keeping in touch with people you have trouble keeping in touch with either due to distance or time, it's great. But as a way of building relationships - very much a mixed bag, and having just as many opportunities to hurt you as to help you. So, I don't use it for that.

1) I started out friending a group of internet only friends, because we were having difficulty staying in touch when a forum we had belonged to together closed down. Originally, I set it up just for them.

2) I have always kept extremely private settings, and been careful not to reveal too much, because even with the settings private, what I post can end up elsewhere as a "friend commented on X's post" type of thing. That has probably hurt my "popularity" on the site, but so be it.

3) I accept everyone who asks to be a friend, IF I actually know them. I'm old enough to not have to worry about bullys or spys and, seriously, if I had such worries, I wouldn't have a facebook account. Most of my hesitations have to do with not feeling that close to the person, and a few I don't really like much, but I simply decided that I wasn't going to make that call. If they feel comfortable enough to ask, then I should feel comfortable enough to accept. It is kind of funny how fast people find you once you have an account; I probably added the first 20 within a month, and that was without doing any friend searches on my own.

4) I don't follow up on who keeps their friend status with me active, and who does not. If someone drops me, I'll assume they have their reasons and I don't want to make an issue out of it.

5) I did eventually decide that everyone on my Christmas card list should be sent a friend request, if they have an account. It is a really nice way to know what is going on with people who live across the country.

6) I don't play any of the games, and I have posted to my friends that I do not. That stuff is addictive, and they are data mining you. I also do not "like" causes or stores, unless it really is something I am activist about. It's just another data mine. I don't accept or send gifts or anything else like that for the same reasons; it's all data mining, I've never felt good about the disclosures involved in using those functions. Not doing the gifts thing probably also hurts my popularity, but it also keeps me out of the whole game of "she sent roses to X y and Z but not to me!" I'm just not playing, period.

I think of facebook as a tool. If you know what you want to use that tool for going in, you can use it more effectively than if you just start playing with the tool, unsure of what you want from it.

I have been using it for a couple of years there are some time it is handy but I make sure everyone on my friends list is someone I feel I know and don't let it run away. Check your privacy settings and don't enter things you don't want everyone to know.
It can be a good way of keeping in touch with people you do not often see and some of the games are fun but bee careful they all keep asking for information you don't really want to give them.

I go on there to play the MindJolt games. The games are fun.

Well, I do have a lot of reservations about it, yes... but deep down, I suspect that it's kind of silly to worry about all those things that I wrote up there. Uncertainty over what people might do and how people might think makes me a withdrawn social cripple. I'm a little bit paranoid about those things, but intellectually, I know that those are silly things to worry about, and that people probably don't really do what I fear they will do, or think what I fear they will think (or at least not in the same way I imagine it). These are the sorts of things I need to get over if I'm to ever improve myself, but I'm as paralyzed by the fear of Facebook as I am curious about it.

ya that was the best thing about it probably...mindjolt games are fun and zinga poker =)

a bit addicting though...

Don't do it unless you are comfortable with it & can find ways to deal with any issues you have with the facespace. I myself only joined to better communicate with people on my campus/friends & ended reconnecting with old friends I lost contact with . One thing I did discover is you can use your setting to try and block who can/not see your stuff (even on messages, etc.)

There are some real things to be concerned about: if you write something, it never goes away, even if you delete it. And you never know when something you wrote privately might become public. There is some amount of "information risk" so you should always be careful about what you write online, even if you are sending it privately.

As for interpersonal disputes, those will eventually happen anywhere. I try to be as diplomatic about them as I am able. I don't hesitate to ask someone to stop if they are saying something offensive or insulting in my Facebook. If they don't stop, I remove the friend connection and, if I feel its necessary, ban them. I've only had to do that a couple of times so far on Facebook (and I've been there a year or two now.)

Basically, your Facebook is your "living room" on the internet and if people aren't behaving themselves at your party, show them the door.

And, no, you don't have to friend everybody and you don't have to always respond to what people say. And if the Facebook turns out to be something you aren't enjoying, you can even delete your entire account.

facebook games are the best!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! ! fronteirville!! !! !! !! !! !!

This is a strong concern, but Facebook does let you have control over who can see what on your page. You can make it so that nobody can see any photos of you or information about you unless you have Friended them. This will prevent your Mom from seeing your Wall unless you Friend her. The catch: maybe she will pressure you into Friending her. But if that seems unlikely (or if her having a Facebook account herself seems unlikely) you can make it so she won't see your Wall or photos even if she finds you in the search engine.

As to the other concern of friends from one place seeing the names of friends from other places, that is definatel;y going to happen. For many people, this serendipity is part of the charm of Facebook. Facebook even facilitates it by alerting you (and alerting your friends) if any two friends have a third friend in common. If that bothers you, you should not use Facebook. Facebook is designed in such a way that Person A and Person B often discover that they somehow both know Person C and didn't even realize it. I have had this happen several times already. I like this aspect. I find it enjoyable to discover that a girl I knew in elementary school went on to marry the cousin of one of my co-coworkers. But if this bothers you, you should not use Facebook since it is likely to happen.



If so, maybe you will find that it's not that bad to discover that some of your friends from one place have a distant connection to some of your friends from another place and they didn't realize they had you in common. It's an odd feeling when it happens but it does help with feelings of connectedness.



There is a lot of leeway here. How much or how little you post is totally up to you and there aren't any social rules about frequency of posting that I have been able to see. Some people post several times a day. Some people only post once or twice a month. There is no social obligation to post very frequently. It is ok not to Friend everybody who asks. It is ok not to reply to all comments, pokes, posts etc. that appear on your wall. It does not need to turn into a huge time sink because there is not a reply obligation the way there often is with personal emails. So this is one thing you can cross off your list of worries.



I enjoy Facebook and post more often than some people I've Friended and less often than others. Pretty much the only thing you really have to worry about is if there are embarrassing photos of you in somebody else's possession. Were you ever photographed drunk at a party? If you were, at some point that photo will show up if you join. But if no such photo exists (or no other equally awful photo), then it should be ok.

One last thing; Keep things bland on Facebook. Facebook is not the place to vent. There is no Haven. So if you are prone to writing angry vent posts and then regretting it- don't join. But if you don;t think you would ever post something like that, it should be ok.

I have a facebook, I manage to avoid Farmville