(1) Facebook is not a good way to meet people or develop relationships further. This is the main motivation and the source of my current rage against the machine, but I will say nothing further of it here.
(2) It has destroyed my blogging. I used to blog quite a bit more. A consequence of my not blogging is I don't write as much; poetry, random thoughts, or issues that are important to me. I don't want to stoop so far as to post what I am doing every single moment, but it is hard to post these things in a space that does not allow for more than 420 characters. Are we freely giving up the ability to express ourselves in a more meaningful way? This moves us to my next point.
(3) It seems self-centered and shallow. I wonder how much things like Facebook and Twitter actually affect relationships, either positively or negatively. I think that networking sites work the opposite way they are intended to; instead of cultivating genuine relationships we are left as people disassociated from everyone. The focus on the self alone with the ability to make one's own self whatever they please leaves us in the "desert of the real." However, this seems absurd to me. I want people to know the real me, not some projection of myself that is virtual.
(4) The only advantage I see is staying in contact with people that are far away, but I do this already through what I see as more personal forms of communication i.e. the phone, video chat, or e-mail. The people I really want stay in contact with I hardly ever get to talk to with one exception.
(5) The program has serious software design issues. The chat program barely works. They are constantly moving things around and changing the layout to stay "new." But it is a difficult program to use. Things like notes or the logout should be easier to access and use. I should not have to go through three screens just to write a new note.
Anyway, that's enough ranting for now. Go out and be a person.
I think in general I only agree with point number five, to which I would also add that the overall design of Facebook is rather messy. The reason I disagree with the other four points (by which I don't mean I think they are false, but that I don't think they are valid criticisms of Facebook) is because I think they either (1) misunderstand the purpose of Facebook or (2) do not apply to Facebook but to the people using Facebook.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is harmless fun, its advantages include being able to share photos, finding long lost friends, keeping up with what people are doing, making jokes, and even sharing meaningful thoughts in less than 420 characters (or with the strangely inaccessible "notes"). That all of this can be done without Facebook is besides the point. No one is saying that Facebook is necessary (well, we can hope...), no one is saying that Facebook is a substitute for real world activities. If you use a hammer to do the job of a wrench you might have all kinds of criticisms of the hammer, but really you shouldn't use a hammer to do the job of a wrench.
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ReplyDeleteMaybe I should clarify where I am coming from. I have an obviously biased opinion because I come from the culture in high school where if you were not friends with someone on Myspace, you were not really friends.
ReplyDeleteI think my rant is pointing to something that is not specific to Facebook but rather the pandemic devolution of our culture in many aspects. Our language is devolving for one. I hate "lolspeak," and after reading Orwell's "Principles of Newspeak," I can see how he is pointing to something very true. Only, in our case, it is not a huge undertaking of Big Brother but just the way culture is swinging for pragmatic reasons. It is becoming difficult to express oneself these days without being relegated as something overly complex.
I really really agree with Jon and Jocelyn. I used to be vehemently against Facebook for these same critiques and many others. After using Facebook now for a while, I still agree with all my critiques (give or take a little), but I realized, as Jon said, that these are more accurately critiques of people and abuses than of Facebook. Not only that, but I think that such abuses occur much less frequently than I had supposed. One of my biggest elements of support for Facebook is this: While living at CBU, there were a bunch of people I liked keeping tabs on to some extent, but saying a brief "howdy" to them in the hall or sharing a joke on the fly was sufficient. I call this "Hall Talk". Likewise, while living with my room mates, we had copious amounts of such very small encounters. These are really important for a relationship because relationships cannot be exclusively consistant of meaningful conversations on the phone or through email. I want to share jokes. I want to point out something funny I saw today. While living with my room mates, we didn't have meaningful conversations every day, sometimes not even in a week or two, but we had much valuable interaction. Hanging out with people and sharing in Hall Talk is very valuable and boosts the frequency and quality of the more meaningful encounters. Facebook allows for some recovery of Hall Talk when you live several timezones away from your friends.
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