According to a recent write-up in Forbes, not having a Facebook account can make you seem suspicious. As the blog details, quitting Facebook, or foregoing it altogether, can lead to suspicions about your character in both your personal and your professional life.
While the story is based on a preponderance of anecdotal evidence, since hard data on the subject simply does not exist, I still find it very disheartening.
I know that Facebook-bashing has become the cool thing to do these days, what with its share price getting hammered on a weekly basis, but lately I've legitimately found myself growing sick of Facebook. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
As I see it, there are only three things keeping me on Facebook, with each of them slowly losing their importance...
- Photos
- Keeping up with distant friends and acquaintances
- Birthday Reminders
Let's tackle each of these reasons, one at a time.
Photos: This is more of a laziness on my part. I almost never take photos of any meaning. I have one album on Facebook from one trip I went on. That's it. Otherwise, every photo on there is from a friend or an event where I happened to get tagged. I suppose my fear is that, without Facebook, I'd simply never take or keep any photos.
The counter-point is that I'd be forced to take photos, and that the photos I'd take would be more meaningful, if I didn't have the book to do it for me. However, if anyone ever opened up my iPhone and looked at my photos, they'd find that about half of them are of my girlfriend's cat, so I'm not overly convinced I'd do much else. Still, Facebook isn't the only way to hold onto photos.
Keeping up with distant friends and acquaintances: For a while, this was the biggest thing that kept me going back. Up until about a year ago or so when I realized, quite simply, that I just didn't care to hear what so many random people had to say. It was a bunch of noise and non-sense from people who, quite frankly, I wouldn't even necessarily go out of my way to say hello to if I saw them on the street. So, I purged my friend list. Recently, I've been thinking it might make sense to do it again.
As I see it, there are maybe three or four people that I am friends with on Facebook who I'd have trouble keeping up with otherwise, and one of them is a Marine who is rarely in one place for an extended stretch of time. I honestly sometimes wonder if Facebook makes me, and others, lazier about keeping up with people. When I should call or email someone, I might just write on their wall. On some level, I think doing that cheapens our inter-personal relationships. Not to mention, I imagine there is an entire generation of people 10 years younger than me who are absolutely incapable of having a serious phone conversation.
Birthday Reminders: I actually think this might be Facebook's best feature. I simply don't need to remember everyone's birthdays because it does it for me. And the best part is that I didn't even need to ask anyone or write anything down.
Maybe this should've been my number one reason for keeping it.
Anyway. Forbes' article really struck a chord with me because I think the idea that one would be considered 'suspicious' for not having a Facebook account is insane and an attack on basic human dignity. At its core, Facebook is a time suck. A black hole where people pass minutes and hours by reading frivolous updates and check-ins. Compulsively going back to see if any updates took place since they last checked two minutes ago.
Go anywhere. Go to a park. Go wait in line for coffee. You'll almost certainly see someone checking Facebook on their phone. Are we really that incapable of spending time without distraction? Do we really need to fill our minds with noise so frequently?
I'm not trying to come off as a luddite, but, more and more, I fail to see the use for Facebook other than as a time waster. And, frankly, there are way better ways to waste one's time than reading over status updates from the extraneous people in one's life. I'll take Reddit over Facebook 10 times out of 10 if I've truly got nothing else to do.
Further, in addition to providing a minimal social benefit at best, it provides virtually no professional benefit. If anything, it can harm you professionally depending on what's in your profile and photo collection. If I'm looking for a professional social network, I'll log in to my LinkedIn account where I never purge connections and am very open about my status and skill set. In fact, I've had multiple potential job opportunities come my way thanks to LinkedIn and have signed up for a paid account on several occasions and found it to be legitimately helpful.
I know this isn't anything particularly new or groundbreaking, but as I talk to friends I find that I'm definitely not alone.
Have any WSO monkeys cut their chains and left Facebook? If so, how'd you find it? What drove you to do it, or, what might drive you to do it? Lastly, what might stop you from leaving it?
I haven't, yet.
The only reason I use it is it's easiest for me to keep in touch with friends. When they stop using it, I'll stop using it. I've noticed more and more people are using it less and less. I might drop out sometime soon.
Also, fuck that suspicious bullshit. If someone gives you that feeling in an interview, call them out on it: -"Why would I keep using a dying service?" -"Why would I want to have my entire life online? It's just asking for your identity to be stolen." -"I'm not in college, people still use that?"
etc etc
cut my chains from facebook!?? what the hell am i supposed to do at work?
i havent deleted it yet but i hardly use it anymore after 95% of my news feed was
"LIKE DIS PIC IF JESUS DIED 4 U IF U DONT LIKE THIS, YOU WILL GO TO HELL"
and other things equally as stupid
Deactivated my account for a week initially, to see the effect it would have on me. It's been 6 months...don't miss it at all. Talk to close friends more often and filtered out all the noise. If someone from my past really wants to track me down they can use LinkedIn.
Literally only use FB to look up someone I might know (aka hot girl).. and then check out the photos. Besides that it's a waste of time. In my opinion, people who constantly update their status with random bs need to get a life.
Speaking of FB.
Any thoughts on this, anyone?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/787981-coming-deluge-of-facebook-stock-…
I stopped using my facebook in 2009. I was big into it during my college years when facebook was fresh. In college it was a great tool to use for hosting parties or getting notes from someone in your class that you didn't know too well. Once I graduated into the real world it lost its relevance. I keep it up there so employers don't think I am weird or have anything to hide. I knew it would come to this eventually. ONE OF US - ONE OF US - ONE OF US - ONE OF US.
The article is funny though. There are roughly 6.5 billion people on earth, roughly 900 million or so are on facebook (including fake accounts, accounts for your family pet, duplicates etc.) I guess this means that the world is teaming with psychos. WATCH YOUR BACKS!!!!!
I'd love to have a time machine and ask a psychiatrist from the 1990s their opinion on this. "Doctor, if an individual were to update, in real time, the entire planets population with their: personal photos, age, real time location, education history, list of people they know, thoughts going through their heads and a picture of who they are currently fucking, would you classify this kind of behavior as healthy?"
Status updates are ridiculous. I'm sure my friends can live without knowing that I will be at this location at 5pm shown by Google maps with these random people I tagged and that I had an amazing falafel at this location on my there with these other random people I tagged.
Quit Facebook in March 2011, havn't looked back or missed a second of it. If I want to catch up with friends I will email / text them. I use iPhoto to store all my pictures and my own Calendar app to keep track of birthdays I care about. As far as I'm concerned Facebook is a giant timesink and, when you think about it, actually kinda creepy.
Good for you guys. Honestly if you can't figure out how to balance social media in your life then it clearly isn't for you.
HEY GUISE I USE FACEBOOK PRIMARY FOR KEEPING UP WITH BIRTHDAYS
lol.
I haven't completely quit. Photos are still too important to me, as I'm constantly trawling for good shots of my dance events (my photographer friends don't maintain actual website portfolios, sigh). And from time to time, I'll toss out open-ended questions (e.g. "Give me recommendations for a good keyboard"). Aside from that, though, Facebook is a waste of time. I have an extension on Chrome that blocks the site except for 9:00-9:15pm every day.
We had something similar in the old days. We called it "self control".
This got me good. I think the digital age is destroying self control.
+1 SB
Count me as suspicious, I have never used it. Why on Earth would I want to hear from people that I have been specifically avoiding for the last 15 years? If we're friends, you know how to find me. If I haven't spoken to you in 15 years, well, that's not an accident or omission.
agree that i have a bunch of FB friends that are not particularly important to me. however, there's another group that is worth keeping in touch with but if not for FB i probably wouldn't out of laziness/business. the way i see it, facebook can work as a pretty effective organizer for your social life. it came in especially handy when i made the move back to my home town in the Bay Area after 6 years of living in Southern California..
Boy great info all around. I love getting these insights into the lives of people I will never meet.
Everyone here knows my position on this, so all I'm gonna say is, hipster that I am, that I hated Facebook before it was cool... and now that you all hate it, I LOVE FACEBOOK
I stopped using facebook a long time ago. I still have an account but rarely check it. Basically it's a huge waste of time and adds no value to the quality of my life.
Linkedin on the other hand, is a great freaking site.
Ditto...
I quit facebook in June 2011 when I got in trouble with my girlfriend and have never been back on since.
How about instead of writing 5-page essays about why you're fed up with facebook, you just stop using it?
I've actually been dying to get off Facebook for a long time. The only reason I'm still on it is that my all of my old Marine squadron is on it and it's how we keep in touch. I'm seriously thinking about bailing altogether though, as I haven't been active on it for the past couple years.
Actually, I have a funny Facebook FAIL story (well, it would be a FAIL if I actually gave a shit). My 25-year high school reunion is coming up in October, and one of the guys I went to high school with sent out a group message a few weeks ago asking if anyone wanted to get together beforehand to party or whatever. Again, this is just a couple weeks ago, so it was after the latest Facebook "update".
I reply to the message something along the lines of, "Not going. Stuck in Paris." or something like that. He replies a couple minutes later, "Too bad, what have you been up to lately?" and we go back and forth for a little bit (this is actually a kid I went to grammar school with before high school, so we've known each other a long time). He sent this message out to like 75 people or something, and I thought we were just sending each other PM's back and forth between the two of us (he thought the same thing).
So naturally I start dogging a bunch of the guys we went to high school with, how everyone we graduated with was an infected douchebag, how the only way I'd get on a plane to see them after 25 years was if I thought I'd have a chance to kick their asses again, etc... when all of a sudden this female friend of ours breaks into the conversation to tell us that we're on group chat and that everyone on the original distribution list can see everything we're writing. Fucking Facebook.
Anyway, I had a good laugh, and I'm sure the fuckers I graduated with feel vindicated in voting me "Most Likely To Be Shot At Dawn" all those years ago. Long story short: as soon as I can figure out how to stay in touch with my Marine buddies, I'm off Facebook for good.
quit Facebook in 09', but reopened a fake one recently so I can use spotify.
deleted it a while ago... All I miss is being able to see chicks in bikini pics
Good post. I deleted my FB about a year ago and don't miss it one bit. It is definitely losing its luster and overall appeal and I'm glad to see society improving on that front. Not having one makes you suspicious? I have to feel there was some bias by the writer of that article.
I also quit facebook last year. I gained a tremendous amount of value from it the first few months of use when every desperate single girl from my high school friended me and from that point on it went downhill rapidly.
This x1000. Every kindergarten teaching bimbo who was still single from HS (i.e. most of them) was a slam dunk. Quit about a year-ish ago as well because didn't see the point and I don't like people. Have a Twitter now which I post random stupid shit on but at least you can lock that and only like 20 people know my @ symbol or whatever.
strangely i've had that problem with instant messaging but not social networking. there were a lot of people from high school who would constantly IM me... most of whom i didn't want to talk to. the difference with social networking is that i don't feel bad about ignoring wall posts or private messages, where as with IM, i feel like kind of a dick for not responding.
i haven't regularly gone on any sort of IM program since high school, and that was like 8 years ago.
That's absolutely pathetic. I've never had a FB page and never will. Why am I suspicious for respecting the privacy of my own personal life? Total horseshit.
i dunno... let me play the devil's advocate here.
i'll come out and say that if i'm not on facebook i feel a bit out of the loop. not just for events and birthdays, but also for trending stories and news, and especially for important life events.
i know this may sound a bit absurd, but i do think that staying in the loop is important and expected nowadays. sure, it's perfectly fine to not know that Joe Shmo from 8th grade biology went rock climbing with a bunch of his friends last weekend. but i DON'T want to be that guy who doesn't know that a close college friend was accepted into law school or that a good high school friend who moved to Ohio last year is getting married. i'd probably hear about these things eventually, but since everybody else will hear about it right away (thanks to facebook's smart newsfeed algorithm) I'd end up being that guy who always hears about these things last. no thanks.
You do know its possible not to friend everyone? You don't need to accept very 23 year old single mom who may have known you in a high school from 2 parties. Nor do you need to allow everyone onto your news feed
I think Facebook has an evolution stage that will need to occur. Right now people are using simply to creep on hot girls, show off baby pics etc...But it has the power to evolve and that evolution is a process that will require users like you to give up on it and then bring you back with something better.
Everytime I see you guys say you hate or quit facebook, it makes more bullish the company and Zuck.
Not many of the guys I know use Facebook any more
For all those who say they don't use/hate FB most likely are in the "older" stages of life and see little benefit of a social networking (for chicks n shit) since LinkedIn fills that career networking role that all of you jerk off to.
I use to love FB when it first came out, hated it when it became popular, and then found a happy medium with it. It literally stored every notable memory in college and post-college with "tagged" pictures/videos. You can see the entire progression of your social circle, friends, work-friends start evolving over time. Its also probably the best self-marketing tool for hot chicks.. if you have an awesome life that is
Twitter is definitely the next big thing, will it ever get to be the size of the next facebook?? Currently most people I know use facebook little to none while constantly tweeting so maybe Twitter will be the next "big thing"
i quit facebook the day i took my first database class in college. you do realize everything you do is being warehoused in palo alto right?
I don't think I've missed out on anything because I don't use FB or Twitter.
A few international calls a year to keep up with friends overseas are good enough.
I've kept mine because it's the go-to service for inviting people to things and sometimes I can be pretty reclusive, so I'm not always texted an invite but I'll be invited on FB.
Birthdays are helpful too.
For keeping up with news Twitter is way better to me. You can tailor your feed to what you want to know about instead of waiting on your friends who are more worried about the Kardashians.
The FB messenger thing is a pain though. Sometimes I'll sign on just to deny friend requests and people I haven't seen in years start messaging me.
Hi, my name is GoldmanBallSachs and I haven't used facebook for over a year now.
In all seriousness though, it's like BH said, I "didn't see the point and I don't like people". I feel like by having a FB you are merely acting like an enabler to your peers. You know why those ppl post album after album of their crazy Friday night antics, or their exotic Caribbean vacation, or statuses about how "totally wasted" they're going to get this weekend? Well that's because they think everytime they do, their 500+ "friends" will see it and be impressed. I figured what better way to show these ppl I truly don't give a fuck about what they do, than to literally take myself out of the system to no longer see it. To this day, my friends will txt me shit that they found on FB and everytime I remind them "there's a reason I deleted it, please never do that again".
I fooled around with Twitter a little after to fill the void, but ultimately deleted that too when I realized I don't give a shit how delicious your ham sandwich was, nor do I want to see a picture of your cat.
I don't know what you guys are talking about. My feed CRUSHES it. Where else am I going to get 10 links to the latest opinion piece on Chick-Fil-A, a photo of "the best sandwich ever," new insights into corporate strategy from recent bschool grads ("my latte had too much cream in it, so they gave me another one - great example of a company identifying a problem and addressing it with strategic foresight"), and inspirational quotes about ending the drama/being the change I wish to see in the world/reforming education/not giving random head?
Put up a decent / professional looking profile pic, turn off all access to your photos / comments to only yourself, don't add stupid timeline covers and crap like that, delete any statuses, and just put the bare minimum info on there (phone contact, e-mail for friends, school if you want, etc.) and set e-mails to go for messages only. Then you get the best of both worlds (ie. no one can snoop on you and you still get the benefits of having a facebook, because I have actually known people who have had issues with people creating fake facebooks of themselves.)
I also do the same thing for twitter just to make sure I have an account.
damn, this is gonna make me sound like a fucking dinosaur. I never had a facebook account, no myspace either. Did signed up for a friendster account I think way back in college when it first came out, but didn't spend more than 5 minutes on it and quit.
I prefer to email and call my friends if I care to. I do see a lot of people at work have a dedicated browser for their facebook account and this one dude actually used one of his monitors just for his facebook stalking.
I haven't had facebook for 2-3 years now. Glad to see there's more people out there dropping it. Wonder what percent of first adopters have now moved on.
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