Gone cold turkey.... On un-social media

As always, depends how you use it. I like keeping friends who aren't really friends in a day to day sense, last time we were in Thailand I contacted a girl I knew in China 9 years ago for a place to stay, and just in the last month I've had two people who I hadn't talked to for 10/12 years drop by and catch up over a beer, one on honeymoon from Singapore and the other writing an article for Cathay's in flight magazine. It's very handy if your circle of friends extends beyond your hometown.

Edit/ my best friends live in Belarus, Manchester, Tanzania, China and the U.S., if there's a better way of keeping up with all of them that they are also subscribed too, I'd be curious to hear it.
 
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Telecaster said:
It's all anonymous though, so who cares if some random internet schmuck gives you grief on PC forum lol?
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Completely anonymous, until you enable trust or a hero internet archivist tracks back through your posts and discovered that you've actually left far more fragmented person information over 5 years and 3,400 posts than you thought possible at the time.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
Indeed we are mostly strangers on here, but a forum is about discussion.
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What? No. Forums are for correcting people who are wrong on the Internet :p

I always hated Facebook from the moment everybody and his dog decided to sign up. Just don't care about what people are doing on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis. I don't mind touching base every so often. I really don't give a rat's bottom what you ate at that restaurant; neither do I care about whatever social issue is the flavour of the month and needs a good old Facebook circle-jerk crusade (with nothing to show at the end).

Social media is a quagmire of crap and always was. And forums aren't social media in my book.
 
pinkpound said:
I don't have a FB account I just look on my wife's(joint friends) for my weekly dose of "narcissist daily"
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Brilliant

The only reason I keep Facebook is for the buying/selling pages as I've always had way more luck on there than via ebay etc. Twitter, I have two accounts but my personal account is just full of wanabe political pundits so probably going to have a cull.

I would personally do without Facebook over all others - hateful place. Twitter has it's uses but totally depends on who you follow (mute) I guess.
 
Facebook and Twitter are used for following my interests rather than people. I have my Facebook account locked down to the maximum settings.

Although I love photography, Instagram I just never got into, just seemed vacuous from the start.
 
Can't people just be selective and read Tweets or whatever just from those whose opinions interest them, rather than reading embroidered accounts of humdrum from the great unwashed? For example, the US President's first Tweet of the New year was excellent, but probably less so than those of "friends" of the overly made up drug dealer bint locked up in Egypt:


"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
 
I kept my accounts but rarely log into them maybe once a week to have a quick scout unless a group event is coming up as certain activities I go to don't have their own site, I took FB off my phone and only have the messenger app installed again I'll only use that if someone messages me, Instagram gets a look through once a day but it's the same old stuff.
 
Literally use facebook to remind me of birthdays and if people want to add me to groups for events like stag doos etc. The time hop makes me cringe so hard, seeing the status' i used to post years ago.
 
I miss the proper internet, late 90s early 00s on dial up and the start of broadband sat at a proper computer. When the internet was a thing to be amazed by, not like it is now where it is just there like electricity and everyone just expects it on their phone and tablet. :(
 
If I hadn't had a FB account created for me back in 2004/2005 (iirc), then I wouldn't have bothered with FB at all - but I was treated to an account by a friend (when they had no email verification); so decided to change the password and use it - and did, until 4 months ago. Twitter, Instgram... never bothered with them. Frankly, I feel that 'social media' is very narcissistic, and those two are the worst for it.

Deleting my FB account was liberating, as it becomes a thing you just do through habit - like smoking I guess. You end up checking it first thing in the morning, and often last thing at night - and all you do, is watch other people's lives, or see endless **** being spewed. I'll miss the laughs from You're So Council, and other groups like that, but I've got better things to do with my time.
 
The mixbus user group posted the offer on the solid state drumstrip plugin going for a one off £10 instead of £129. SSL NEVER DO OFFERS !

Now that's a useful way to use FB.

You can have FB for purely your hobby or interest. You don't have to have you family or friends on your feed if you don't want...

FB is a great way to connect with like minded people about stuff your interested in....
 
MikeTheNative said:
Facebook is what you make of it. If you find yourself getting annoyed by the same people's content then unfriend or unfollow them and like more interest pages.
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Totally agree. I've had to unfollow some people on facebook, not because they are bad people, but because they just over-share constantly, usually repetitively too (e.g. unfollowed someone after the 500-odd-th post of their dog). Then there's the ones who just seem to be trying to show everyone else just how much better their life is than everyone else. I hate people like that. I have one "friend" (technically my GFs cousin) who claims she never eats at home, has had 9 holidays this year, parties with footballers (allegedly), yet I'm fairly sure she hasn't got a pot to **** in, so I'm kind of puzzled how she funds it, but anyway, it just comes across as bragging, and its obnoxious (and lets not get started about the fact at least half her posts are full of cringey hashtags like #lifeisbeautiful).

I think I might have a cull, actually :)

However I am not one of these saddos who announces every few months to the whole of facebook that they are coming off it. Put up or shut up, I say. Attention seeking, and its many forms. Its the 21st century version of "Keeping up with the Jones'"
 
My sentiments on this really have shifted in the last few years. I actually find the whole Facebook and wider social media thing quite insidious now. Admittedly I am fairly anti social but I cannot understand people that have hundreds and hundreds of friends and are voyeuring (is that even a word?)on all their lives with every flick of a finger. When we first had our children FB was genuinely useful for sharing pics with close family who lived remotely and the reminders of past photos is actually still quite nice, but its not enough to put up with the invasive nature of the platform. I too locked down the privacy to the maximum but I suspect its not where Ideally I'd like.

Clearly there are some clever people involved in all of this but the drive to monetise the data I also find to be unbalanced. I suspect that GDPR might not impact Facebook directly but it should.

I am tempted to delete our account. I removed the app from my phone last year and haven't missed it one bit but the Mrs still seems to dip in and out although never posts and deleted her own account after the school run mother's scene got intolerable.

anyone seen the latest Black Mirror - episode one of S4 kind of sums up where this is going!
 
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