For Facebook Friday this week, I thought I would point out the obvious. Not everyone likes Facebook. No real shock, I know but I am going to talk about it anyway.
While surfing the blog world I came across an interesting post written by blogger that goes by the name Blue. From what I can gather, Blue is not a very sociable in real life and those feelings extend to social networking as well. When someone who Blue was not particularly fond of sent her a friend request, she panicked and deleted her account with the firm intention of never returning. Most of us, of course, would have simply denied the friend request and forgot it ever happened. Blue, however, was never truly comfortable with Facebook to begin with so her reaction could be understandable. What surprised me was that, of the 15 comments that Blue’s blog entry on the subject of leaving Facebook received, most of them were anti-Facebook. An anonymous commenter even wrote “Facebook is the devil, you are well aware of it.”
Anonymous said…
facebook is the work of the devil, you are well out of it.
Of course, one could argue that Blue and her followers are mostly of an older demographic but studies have shown that more and more seniors are getting on board with social media. Also, I have had more than a couple of friends in their 20’s and 30’s abandon Facebook, while keeping their blogging accounts going strong. One of my friends, a fellow Toronto blogger in her early 20’s deleted her account several months ago because “…it [Facebook] had gotten too weird.”
There are some people who are not entirely abandoning Facebook, but are definitely questioning their presence and activities on the social networking site. I was surprised to find that one of my out of town friends, who had about a billion FB friends, had deleted his account. Just when I had grudgingly accepted the fact that we would no doubt revert back to our pre-Facebook sporadic relationship that revolved solely around his visits to the T-dot, he opened another Facebook account and has thus kept his friend following to about 15. He has also avoided adding any apps or taking any personality, intelligence, or star knowledge quizzes.
My final example of a Facebook “hater” is my own boyfriend. Although he has a Facebook account, he does not sign into it more than a couple times a month, and even then it is usually at my “gentle” reminding that he has wall posts he should answer or that one of our friends posted vacation pics, etc. The concerns that my bf has about FB are typical to the complaints I commonly hear: “Is Facebook really secure?” “It seems like an online popularity contest.” And “Someone poked me? What are we, in third grade?” but more than that, the BF’s major concern is that it takes the personalization out of socializing. He questions whether or not he should he be FB friends with anyone that he would not invite over for dinner. And why wouldn’t he call a friend and wish them Happy Birthday rather than writing it on their wall?
For me, Facebook has been great for keeping in touch with old friends and upcoming events, and our web design, copywriting and translations page has been great for keeping people apprised of iMark happenings as well. On the other hand, I can fully understand why some people may want to avoid Facebook like the plague. Which camp do you belong to?