When you wrote “Against Facebook”a couple years ago, I had the same reaction as some of the other commenters here—that yes, Facebook was terrible, but I used it more responsibly than other people, and I had really thought it through and was getting the valuable things out of it while avoiding most (though not all) of the drawbacks.
But I left Facebook (and Tumblr) last November, and now reading this post I was like, “hell yeah, of course.” I don’t ever feel a desire to check Facebook—last week it sneakily logged me back in without me knowing, and I couldn’t deactivate again fast enough. I had a bunch of notifications but even the thought of checking them felt disgusting.
I thought Facebook was helping me keep in touch with friends, but before leaving I made sure I shared my other contact information with anyone who asked for it, and this seems like it’s solved the problem. I may not know what’s going on with everyone I’ve ever known at every moment, but I know that I could find out if I really wanted to, by texting them or emailing them or sending them a letter. Plus, this strategy meant that one of my friends from high school, who I haven’t talked to in years, sent me a postcard from all the way in Japan! That gave me more warm fuzzies than a full year of Facebook use. Since leaving social media I also spend more time with my housemates and higher-quality time with my boyfriend, so I feel that it’s helped my social relationships in general, even if I have fewer now.
(One caveat is that I live in a group house, which means that if there’s an event that I might want to go to or something important happens in our social circles, I’m likely to find out about it even though I don’t have Facebook, because my housemates do have Facebook. So this feels kind of like cheating.)
I’m more conflicted about the use of Facebook for things other than casual socializing. On the LW/SSC meetups survey I ran, I asked a question about how people would want to communicate with people from other meetup groups, and a clear majority of respondents wanted to use a Facebook group. I really don’t want to go back to using Facebook (which I’d have to if I wanted to admin the group), but I do sort of agree that Facebook groups are the best currently-existing tool for the sort of thing we want to do.
I also used to have a feeling that Facebook was really the only place to go to ask for things like borrowing items or finding volunteers for events. That’s somewhat less true for me since people in my neighborhood coordinate over Slack and Discord, but I do think there’s a lot of value in being able to broadcast requests to hundreds of people at once.
tl;dr I personally hate Facebook but am not sure about the feasibility of replacing it. Not a very unique position, I know.
When you wrote “Against Facebook” a couple years ago, I had the same reaction as some of the other commenters here—that yes, Facebook was terrible, but I used it more responsibly than other people, and I had really thought it through and was getting the valuable things out of it while avoiding most (though not all) of the drawbacks.
But I left Facebook (and Tumblr) last November, and now reading this post I was like, “hell yeah, of course.” I don’t ever feel a desire to check Facebook—last week it sneakily logged me back in without me knowing, and I couldn’t deactivate again fast enough. I had a bunch of notifications but even the thought of checking them felt disgusting.
I thought Facebook was helping me keep in touch with friends, but before leaving I made sure I shared my other contact information with anyone who asked for it, and this seems like it’s solved the problem. I may not know what’s going on with everyone I’ve ever known at every moment, but I know that I could find out if I really wanted to, by texting them or emailing them or sending them a letter. Plus, this strategy meant that one of my friends from high school, who I haven’t talked to in years, sent me a postcard from all the way in Japan! That gave me more warm fuzzies than a full year of Facebook use. Since leaving social media I also spend more time with my housemates and higher-quality time with my boyfriend, so I feel that it’s helped my social relationships in general, even if I have fewer now.
(One caveat is that I live in a group house, which means that if there’s an event that I might want to go to or something important happens in our social circles, I’m likely to find out about it even though I don’t have Facebook, because my housemates do have Facebook. So this feels kind of like cheating.)
I’m more conflicted about the use of Facebook for things other than casual socializing. On the LW/SSC meetups survey I ran, I asked a question about how people would want to communicate with people from other meetup groups, and a clear majority of respondents wanted to use a Facebook group. I really don’t want to go back to using Facebook (which I’d have to if I wanted to admin the group), but I do sort of agree that Facebook groups are the best currently-existing tool for the sort of thing we want to do.
I also used to have a feeling that Facebook was really the only place to go to ask for things like borrowing items or finding volunteers for events. That’s somewhat less true for me since people in my neighborhood coordinate over Slack and Discord, but I do think there’s a lot of value in being able to broadcast requests to hundreds of people at once.
tl;dr I personally hate Facebook but am not sure about the feasibility of replacing it. Not a very unique position, I know.
Would you mind being more specific about what you find lacking in other tools?