Why FB is a cesspool (not hive of scum and villainy)

[digitaldiscipline]

Else-LJ, a friend said: I barely even use LJ anymore. .... The only reason I stopped posting here regularly and locked up all my old stuff is because nearly everyone else has left. I still have a few friends who post regularly, but it's dwindled so much that I often forget to check my friends list for days. A few years ago, I was refreshing it every 15 minutes that I was online.

As I said to them, "This is exactly the self-perpetuating cycle that turned this place into a fucking ghost town, unfortunately."

Shit like this is why I'm curtailing my FB perusal (idea from the above quoted friend, with further elucidation by yours truly):

John Smith is now friends with Mary Jones (who?  and who?)
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Larry Johnson became a fan of Dale Earnhardt (#3 RIP), Putting Stupid Shit on Pizza So It Will Have More Fans Than That Pickle and Other Obscure and/or Pointless Crap Because I Am A Fucking Lemming
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Jennifer White is now in a relationship with James Fandango Thomson (... for values of "now" that mean "any time from yesterday to six years ago, and they're just noticing that ticky box")
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Robert Jones has installed the CuddleBunnies application (where's the fucking block button?)
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Susan Williams RT @glenn_beck RT @Real_Michelle_Malkin I think that we need to fight Socialism by smearing our own feces in our hair! || Suck that, @KeithOlbermann & @maddow!!!
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Brandon Thomas is bored.
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Jody Davis invited you to the event UNINTERESTING CLUB NIGHT IN A CITY YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO! 

Fortunately, I have a few friends who haven't abandoned it for greener and shallower pastures, and, thanks to the highly inconvenient new internet filtering policies at my office, it's one of the few places that my web browsing isn't completely gimped (though I do tend to get a lot of broken image links when folks post pictures). When one's options are externally limited to FB, Twitter, and LJ, there's not exactly a lot of room to "stray." Hell, I hold up a very small "Kick me!" sign by clicking on such deviant content as Yahoo's sports page to read the recaps of the NHL playoff games (on that note: SUCK IT, RED WINGS, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! *ahem*)

Honestly, I have FB for two reasons, neither of which are particularly compelling: One, to share certain stuff with a wider audience, though I have no idea if they bother reading it (in exactly the same way I don't bother with 99% of the stuff I see there from them - I'm not even talking about the pointless system messages cited above, I mean the "at such and such a place for lunch" drivel. Really, I don't give a fuck, and if there was some way to auto-ignore foursquare-generated updates and the "so and so performed such and such a thing on FB" system messages, I'd be all over it in a hot minute. And two, I haven't nuked it so I can check out my friends' photo albums because that's where they get put, instead of someplace more convenient.

Oh, and for playing Lexulous, but now that that's been nuked by work, even that's substantially blunted.

Frankly, I've spent a lot of time (basically, from the mid-90's on) prosecuting all (or the vast majority) of my social life via IM, so that's my preferred MO, but that's been summarily fucked, and with my time-consuming commute and exercise regimen, I'm not on except for maybe 15 minutes before work, and perhaps an hour or two in the evening... more than one person has mentioned in the last couple of weeks that I've apparently been missed (since webmail, too, has been taken off the table).

Yeah, I twit, but it's not exactly the place to unload the quality vitriol my audience expects.

I have no intention of shutting up or shutting down my presence on LJ. You poor fuckers are stuck with me, the few of you who are left, anyway.

Comments

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

Good for you.
I haven't abandoned LJ either. :o)

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

Hooray! I continue to avoid Facebook like the plague. Anyone who _actually_ wants to find me can do so easily via the great Google.

[ladylabyrinth.livejournal.com]

Well, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if there wasn't at least a weekly 1000 word rant from you on here. So thank for the reassurance! ^_^

[chromeangel.livejournal.com]

Wow somebody at your work needs to wake up and smell the reality. If you gimp your workers communications their happiness and productivity will go down.

Being in IT Management I have always refused to implement HR policies with technology if you don't want someone going to some site or surfing an inordinate amount of time tell them not to if they do, well do your fucking job and penalize them, it's not my job to do yours.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

IMHO, the blockages aren't so much related to making people stay on task so much as preventing fools from bringing malware inside. I'm savvy, I'm careful where I go, and I keep AV stuff current and I only get that little alert in the corner popping up about twice a year. But it's not ZERO. But I've watched friends and relatives who are not savvy online and seen the little alert come up a couple of times per hour. And they laugh nervously and go right on doing what they're doing, be it checking happyfunmail.com or downloading the eighth edition of puppy smilies for their Yahoo Messenger client, or clicking adverts for gay porn while decrying how disgusted they are by it. And letting some of that crap loose is a good way to burn through IT attention and resources like there is no tomorrow, even if it ends up resulting in no actual loss of data. And hours are expensive.

As for myself, I'll generally stick with what I can reach with an ssh tunnel and my own outside resources. And essentially, no one bothers to spam USENET's text groups much anymore.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

There is a valid business reason for blocking webmail - it could allow documents containing sensitive info to be sent out, circumventing the scan-and-protect features we have in place.

Just like paying taxes, understanding the need doesn't make engaging in the process any more pleasant. :-)

[chromeangel.livejournal.com]

Well I agree, I just meant I wouldn't block IM or LJ and things like it. If it was a perceived threat or on a black list it was gone. But then again It was my job to protect the company from those obvious things. It was also my job to help educate our work staff as to proper netiquette didn't always work but it made things easier on everyone and less of a headache for me and my team.

[critus.livejournal.com]

Rafe already said it, but I'll just second it. We work for a financial institution. There's a lot of risk involved in our company allowing access to services that can allow file transfer. That said, we actually have a very liberal computer use policy and we DO have a "discipline the user who wastes time" attitude.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

*nod* And based on the behavior that I've witnessed, people do think twice about mailing themselves things offsite, but do think nothing of copying stuff off to a USB drive. But it's rare that organizations fill USB ports with glue. Webmail hits can at least be logged. I've always thought that the best statement corporate IT could make was something along the lines of "We log. We log EVERYTHING. We know every website you visit, how often, for how long, and what you did there. If someone has a business reason to know, they'll ask us and we'll tell them. If you don't want your manager to know what you do online, don't use work machines to do it."

[chromeangel.livejournal.com]

AMEN

Pass the peas please.

[sloot.livejournal.com]

that's an awesome IT policy.

[critus.livejournal.com]

We don't fill our USB ports with glue. All the USB drives are controlled by centralized software and any device connected to a USB drive on our network has to be authorized before it will work. :)

[critus.livejournal.com]

It's publicly available. I'll get the name and comment back later.

[chromeangel.livejournal.com]

Oh I understand completely. My previous work place did not have legitimate requirements. I now work for the US GOV and you haven't seen locked down, Till your talking RSA encryption keys and smart cards in the laptops, heh we cant do a damn thing when connected to the network and these people still find ways to get themselves infected with malware.

[vatine]

I'm still here (even if I am slowly continuing my migration over to Dreamwidth; at some point I may, possibly, enable the crossposting functionality, though).

I (IIRC) blame you linking to my little piece on 7/7.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that I don't see anything you've written on July 7th in either 2009 or 2008... to what are you referring?

[vatine]

I think it was you who linked to this a while back and then when I saw you fly past, commenting in a post by thewronghands to my to-read list.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Ahh, okay. That does ring a bell now.

[vatine]

I even think I left a comment on the entry in question.

[ivy]

I've been considering that, but if I do, I'll be crossposting. But I'm hanging around here for the foreseeable future, even if many people have abandoned it.

[sloot.livejournal.com]

Setting up the crossposting is stupid easy btw

[vatine]

Yes, I just need to consider all the ramifications of it before I act on it and I just haven't had the time.

[sloot.livejournal.com]

yeah, there is that.

There is value in considering actions.


Doesn't encourage me to do it though.


*bull in a china shop*

[fallenlibrarian.livejournal.com]

:) excellent.

[normalcyispasse.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Facebook is increasingly more vapid.

Sadly, I've noticed a migration of some good LJ friends to the Dark Side (Twitter), where I absolutely refuse to tread.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, I've actually picked up a couple twitter-only acquaintences, but it's the exception rather than the rule.

[code-monk.livejournal.com]

I got into the game late.

Most of my friends / family are on FB, and almost none of them blog. Those that do write, use their own sites, not LJ.

I'd love to see LJ get more attention . . . there's a difference between writing and discussion, and making snide comments on a status change.

[mykal.livejournal.com]

Hells YES! I fell asleep during the third period of the Arizona/Detroit game. I'm glad Arizona pulled it off.

[mykal.livejournal.com]

I guess I should say something more on topic though. At SxSW I decided that the pendulum must swing back towards more intimate online experiences: personal websites, blogs, newsgroups or other old school methods of maintaining an online presence.

The big social networks will be for the unwashed masses as it were. Enough tools exist at any single host that you can have a dedicated blog, photo gallery, media player and other whizzbangs without having to join a great social circle of people you went to high school with or haven't spoken to in decades.

[cheez-ball.livejournal.com]

I actually use FB for work. I chat with people at other labs, some overseas, on there. However my computer illiterate folks are also on there, which means I go through great pains to edit, and keep g-rated, what's posted. And because a lot of people in my field are on there, I limit the personal information.

There was an interesting flame war involving my brother (a Catholic monk) about a month or two ago when, on my status update, I expressed disappointment in Catholic Charities pulling all family benefits because they didn't want to risk giving health care to a *gasp* gay person.

Another flame war erupted over me posting a picture of a Nike ad featuring a strong, muscular woman in her workout clothes. It actually ended up in an epic flounce and some dude claiming that seeing women in workout gear was the same thing as looking at porn, that men couldn't control themselves and it was a woman's fault if she was assaulted by a man. This from a guy that, in college, spent most of his time nude, painted blue and streaking across campus.

Actually you might like the FB community "Shut Up and Lift." If you do a search for "Shut Up and Lift" it's the one with over 20,000 members.

Next, I'm going to set up a LinkedIn account for career-oriented stuff only. I can't see that getting all that much traffic, but it will help with things like organizing conferences. I'm still not using Twitter, because I can't see the difference between that and the FB status page.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Not to be contrary for contrariness' sake (though, to be certain, I do plenty of that). I don't like the interface or, really, pretty much anything about how they're arranged and managed, and I have the distinct impression that the signal:noise ratio is disappointingly lousy.

At the bottom of it all, I am so atavistically opposed to FB groups that I've culled people for sending me too many invites to groups, events, and such after saying, "Knock that shit off." Of course, these are people I barely know, so it's not like it's a big deal anyways, but still. Spam is spam is spam; hell, I've flamed family members for excessive and insipid joke-forwarding before.

In the main, I am not going to become a fan of some club night, or pseudo-celebrity, or whatever, just because someone suggests it to me. Honestly, the only reason I'm in any groups at all is because I'm an admin for them, which might serve some useful purpose at an unspecified future date.

[cheez-ball.livejournal.com]

Nothing wrong with not liking the interface. Everyone has a system they prefer. Not too long ago I was still using vi to edit. People called me and old fart for it, but it was much faster for editing and compiling. Of course today I'm using java, but that's neither here nor there..... Image J prefers java, so java it is.

Anyways, for short, g-rated stuff I use facebook extensively. For personal blogging I prefer LJ and for my foodie blog I'm using blogspot - because as far as I can see the only useful purpose of blogspot is for something you don't mind the rest of the planet reading and for streaming other blogspot blogs. I'd never put the stuff I put on LJ on blogspot.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

That latter bit is why I have the fitness journal there, for exactly the same reason.

[elixxir.livejournal.com]

We should all pool our Cool People Who Are Left so that we can get to know each other and up the reasons for us to stay engaged here. Or something. What's your Twitter handle or am I being dumb and blonde and already have you added? :p

[ldybastet.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm glad to be stuck with you! :D

I do have a FB account, but boy do those idiotic messages raise my blood pressure at times! *grin* That's when I know it's time to step away from the computer, take a few deep breaths, and refocus on what I was actually supposed to do before I was sucked into the timewaste that FB is. ;)

Hmm... I really can't even begin to imagine how your rants would look if you tried to use Twitter for them. O.o A good, proper rant needs at least 500-1000 words! 140 characters gets you nowhere!

I miss IRC. Y!M is not at all as fun as that thing was. *sigh* (Although, the a/s/l messages from random people are very much the same.)

[i-renovated.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm not going anywhere either. And if you don't keep up with the vitriol, my life gets just too damn boring.

[helcat.livejournal.com]

Well, I left LJ for a specific reason. I still read here because of folks like you, but never in a timely fashion.

But then I don't read anything in a timely fashion anymore.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I was doing a recent cleanup, and noticed I have about 8 entries for your various usernames. Is this the one that should avoid the axe? :-)

[helcat.livejournal.com]

Yep; this is the one I still read from and it houses all of my archives, although all of them are marked private.

[ladyheatherlly.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I inspired you so much. :)
You might be more succinct (and a little more hostile *grin*) on the issue, but the idea behind it is definitely one we share.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Conjugating "fuck" saves a lot of wear and tear on the keyboard.

Vulgarity is SRS BZNS.

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

WORD.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

seconded!

[kest]

Oddly, I'm finding facebook quite effective for noting which lj posts of yours bear reading. :D

[etcet.livejournal.com]

anything without a [fitness] label in the title? ;)