Posted on 05/17/2012 8:01:53 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
Don't try to friend MaLi Arwood on Facebook. You won't find her there. You won't find Thomas Chin, either. Or Kariann Goldschmitt. Or Jake Edelstein. More than 900 million people worldwide check their Facebook accounts at least once a month, but millions more are Facebook holdouts. They say they don't want Facebook. They insist they don't need Facebook. They say they're living life just fine without the long-forgotten acquaintances that the world's largest social network sometimes resurrects. They are the resisters.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I found out my Grandson was critically injured in a tornado through my daughter who saw it on my DIL’s facebook page. DIL posted it while she was in the ambulance. My Daughter called us when she saw the post saying that he had severe brain trauma and a broken back. (Thank God that wasn't the case! He has fully recovered from his injuries.)I don't get the need for someone to splay their entire life for everyone to see and use it as the only form of communication.
(I am still pissed about finding out about this that way!)
Then the "Friend" invitations started coming in, and now for every interesting item 50 are junk. She is about to "Defriend" a lot of people.
Meh. Guess that I’m just ahead of my time.
Meh. Guess that I’m just ahead of my time.
Yup. I figured out at my HS reunion that, really, the only thing that I have in common with most everyone there happened 20 years ago.
It was sad, really. I've moved on, but so many others are still in the same place.
I keep in touch with those that I want to keep up with. the rest? Meh.
Other than a bazillion people who seem willing to share the most personal and/or inappropriate information with the world in general (you can now use FB to tell the universe that you are an organ donor for instance - next you can provide blood type and since they probably already know where to find you - bye, bye), FB is also well on it’s way to controlling public discourse, particularly political discussion.
To whit: in order to comment on USAToday, Dallas Morning News etc. You have to join FB. Not just to post, but to comment on the posts of others or even just to give a thumbs up. Thumbs down are no longer permitted so every bit of inane, biased leftist drivel goes mostly unchallenged and looks like the only opinions out there.
It’s obviously intended to suppress the rest of the political spectrum. I would certainly not be adverse to using a faux signup but suspect they have ways to tie you to your PC, mobile device etc.
It’s not just users: GM says “no, thanks,” too:
GM Says Facebook Ads Don’t Work, Pulls $10 Million Account
As for government watching Facebook activity - you think they don't know exactly who every FReeper is and have lots of us on watch lists already? The only way around that is to adopt a Thoreau/Unabomber lifestyle. :)
Keep Facebook for family and close friends only. Set up a LinkedIn profile and do your connecting with less familiar people over there - not as much potential for damage.
Besides, who has the time?
Not to mention YouTube.
What concerns me is the tendency to pass ex post facto laws and ordinances which may make something you do legally today, punishable in the future.
(Like, for instance, the one which prohibits owning a firearm for anyone ever convicted of an act of domestic violence--which although it did not present a problem for me, used the distant pasts of a host of people to block their RKBA).
The less 'they' know, the better it gets--and the push is to monitor all electronic communication.
The article is about the people who don't use it, and I are one.
We're posting why.
Savvy young billionaires and the like would be reading this thread and trying to figure out how to draw us in so they'd maybe make even more money, or come up with an alternative.
For them, it's a marketing challenge (and income stream). I don't begrudge them that. For millions, a past time, I don't begrudge them that, either. But it's not for me and many others. Don't begrudge us that, and we can all get along, even if you can't 'unfriend' us, or however that works. (8^D)
Facebook is likely to have an estimated market valuation of some $100 billion, making it worth more than Kraft Foods, Ford or Disney.
This is a “moral-bubble”. What does Facebook actually contribute to the economy besides a marginal level of entertainment and advertising?
Just like any TV network or newspaper.
I have advertised on Facebook and it doesn’t work as GM has found out.
Nearly all of the ads are never seen by the users. Total waste of time and money.
I use the post office “MAYBE” 3-4 times a year. That’s it.
I really DON’T want all the intimate details of anybody’s life.
People I love and care about receive phone calls, personal visits, and pictures which are emailed.
Typing on a keyboard does NOT constitute a ‘relationship’ of any kind. Sometimes I see people sitting in the same room typing away on their phones to their facebook accounts, to EACHOTHER! How stupid is THAT?
I am not interested in announcing all of my business to the world at large. I LIKE privacy! Some things aren’t anybody else’s business, and I have to assume that there are people who care as little about my business as I do theirs.
I use software to filter out ads. I don’t care for TV because of Ads. I’ve stopped purchasing magazines full of ads, and I sure as hell don’t want facebook’s ads either!
I am intelligent enough to know that products exist and if I want a product I can run a search for information about that product.
I find begging, distasteful, and that’s all ads are. They are begging for your money. I don’t care for begging at the cash register either! “Would you like to donate to an organization that fights breast cancer by providing funds to an organization which causes it?” NO! And because you asked, I will shop elsewhere for a few weeks so that YOU are deprived of my money, just for begging.
If I want to give charitably, I already KNOW who I want to give to!
When I travel, I don’t appreciate panhandlers either. It’s all the same to me, it’s begging, and it’s pathetic.
And if that’s not enough, If you decide to purchase a product, the price is inflated to force YOU to PAY for their indecent Begging!
Ads represent inconsiderate greed to me, so yes, I oppose it. It’s like walking down the street with crowds of people trying to rip your clothes off to get to your wallet, every time you step out the door.
Buy this, buy that...pick me...
Everybody want’s every tenth of a penny you might have in your pocket, to where they will even steal your name and inforation like it’s their own, while they copyright and register theirs so YOU can’t use it.
If your stuff isn’t to be respected, then registered trademarks and copyrights should also be dissolved. Money isn’t God. It burns, it rots, and it’s influence is only temporary, and then you die. Game over for all.
We all face our maker with the same checkbook in hand. Who we were, and what we did to better life for the other guy.
Those are our REAL accounts.
Pick up the phone and call me to learn when it’s a good time to knock at my door so we can give each other a hug, and a cup of coffee, some genuine tears and laughter. We don’t need greedy ads for that. Anything less than that is like kissing your bride through a veil.
Was it that GMs ads didn’t work or just that GM’s vehicles stink? Advertising bad products doesn’t tend to help the bottom line much. The big thing to use FB for is the likes, those are people actually ASKING to see your ads.
I never exactly joined Facebook, but did register with them because I thought it was necessary to view the pages of politicians, other public figures and organizations, etc. Turns out it wasn’t really required.
All they have from me is an email address and maybe a nickname, I don’t recall. But now I have a ‘Facebook page’, at least it puts one together for me by truncating my email address and using that as my name. Then it pulls people I’ve never heard of and shows them and a few I know that it associates with me by some links. And it even grabs a guy I exchanged one email with when he emailed me personally off a health discussion forum.
I get updates from a couple of people I do know who have active FB pages.
But FB took the most minimal information about me and operates as if I’m a member with an active page. I’ve never provided a single input beyond the basic registration.
I probably need to just un-register and get away from it entirely.
Like eh?
The are a large number of people on Facebook who love, just adore, hitting the like button on your ad. When you try to contact them to see if you can help them they report you as spam and you get banned from friending any new people for months at a time.
It is the single most hostile advertising environment that I have ever experienced. I have spent a lot of time in advertising (owner and employee) and I know what I am doing.
Facebook is a way for me to stay acquainted with acquaintances that I want to remain acquaintances.
That’s not how you do advertising on FB. The way that actually works it to put up a corporate page, people like THAT, not your ads, and you keep a constant flow of information going to that page, information specifically geared to be friendly, away from looking like advertisements. It’s a different world of advertising that needs to look like communications NOT ads and NOT making first contact.
You might have spent a lot of time in advertising but that’s old knowledge that’s not useful to this medium. It’s a new world where people actually specifically reject your old way of doing things. Which is why your contacts get reported as spam. If you want to see how it works “like” George Takei, he’s mastered the medium.
Same here, using a shell of an email address in order to post comments on some newspapers. Recently FB emailed me that to prove I was a "real person", I had to give them my cell or home phone number.
See ya.
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