Facebook.
It's pretty much awesome as far as I'm concerned. While there are some aspects of it that drive me nuts, I don't know what I would do without it. It's kind of a double-edged sword, allowing us to reconnect with people we haven't seen in years, stay current on what our friends are up to, and organize/invite friends to events easily. At the same time it has completely killed my ability to connect with friends who are not on facebook unless I see them often.
A recent example of this: a very good friend of mine from high school and early college years had refused to join facebook for whatever reason. While we used to talk on the phone every few months to catch up, over time we talked less and less until our only correspondance was through Christmas cards (until I lost track of her address and even that had to go). I could have emailed back and forth I suppose, or for that matter picked up the dang phone from time to time, but for some reason facebook seems to be my only method of non-face-to-face conversation anymore. So when she finally joined recently as did a little happy dance in my living room because I could finally get my friend back.... pathetic? yep! This friend has ment a lot to me over the years but I apparently suck at staying in contact with anyone outside of my newsfeed.
Then there's the things that drive me nuts.
Item number 1: people constantly feeling the need to let everyone know that they now have another cow in their farmville game, etc. I don't care about how you're doing in a game I don't play, and when all you do is share your game news withe everyone just know this... I will "hide" you from my newsfeed. You've been warned.
Item number 2: "status shuffle". Status Shuffle is a thing where you can click on it and it will give you choices of clever/funny/ironic statuses that you can use. I will openly admit that I have tried it a couple times... no big deal. BUT if 90% of your status updates come from Status Shuffle... then really what's the point of updating at all? If your day is so boring or unoriginal that you can't come up with your own update then just close the dumb thing. You know what though? even if your update is boring, it's at least yours. I had a recent status that spoke of how hungry I was at the time... what can I say - other than the fact that I'm often stressed out and really busy - my life is pretty borning, but at least it was original.
Item number 3: Terrible terrible grammer. It is facebook and I'm not suggesting you need to proof read your updates or use all the proper punctuation/spelling/grammer, but it really gets my goat when someone types an entire paragraph or story without a single freaking punctuation mark. I type run-on sentences like they are going out of style, but at least you'll get a comma every now and then to take a breath! I'm no grammer-snob, but really god-awful grammer in facebook statuses have caused me to actually "hide" people from my newsfeed simply because I can't stand to read it. Drives me nuts!
Ok, that rant's over. I love facebook for the ways in which I can keep up with my friends/family. I love it because I don't have a single coworker to randomly exclaim how hungry I am or how I want to glue my chatty 4-year-old's mouth shut and it allows me to throw it out there in about 3 seconds for anyone who cares (or doesn't care) to hear.
Oh, and please don't judge me for that last sentence in the previous paragraph.. I'm not perfect! :o)
My Mother’s House
3 years ago
