I dislike Facebook
Everyone asks me about when I'm getting a Facebook. Answer: Never. I will get one. You could actually - you know - talk to me. A friend explained to me that if you have one, you exist. Well, I exist quite fine (minus that whole allergy thing..). I had a healthy group of friends where I live, but now it's down to essentially two since Facebook exploded. I hate how impersonal it is - come to me, read about me, look at me, read about completely irrelevant things. If you wouldn't text them to your best friend, you should post it as a status. Status is "what you are doing right now", and essentially, the answer is, "posting on Facebook to make it look like I have a life". I've heard of people who take their phones to their weddings so they can update their Facebook or their Twitter right as they get hitched. or have a baby. This is ridiculous. You don't need to record your life. You should be LIVING your life.
Last year, I participated in a writing contest. The winner was decided by an integrated Facebook application so persons could vote for your work. It suddenly went from being a writing contest to a social networking contest. Sure, they had a lot of entries, but last I checked writing contests were won or lost based on the skill of the writer. Shocking, I know.
I once invited a friend, M, over to watch some concert lives. She and my ex-roommate are friends as well, and while I sat in my bedroom with the TV on playing the concert, they were in the living room on their computers side by side on Facebook. Thanks, guys.
Another friend, K, asked me to go into her Facebook to change her password so she could focus on finishing the spring semester of her senior year. She told me she was going through withdrawal. Today, a childhood friend called K. I was asked to go in and add said friend on Facebook. If I didn't, friend would be insulted. DISAGREE. Said friend 1) called you 2) knows you're on a Facebook hiatus and will not available to see your updates for six months 3) can only get your contact information from Facebook? No, no, no. This is insane! Why couldn't K tell her friend her e-mail and Skype info over the phone? If said friend was REALLY a friend, they'd respect your goddamn wishes for staying off of Facebook and speak to you outside of it.
I also hate when you're with someone, in person, and they whip out their iPhone to check their Facebook. PUT IT AWAY.
"But...it lets me connect to people I haven't seen in a while!" You don't talk to your best friend from 2nd grade anymore? Why not? See, everyone moves on with their lives. People change and grow, and with it, your friends change. There was Shelby, Kelley, Sarah, Michelle, Micah, and Rachael. I do not regularly talk to them anymore because people change. Your childhood is full of transient persons.
"Don't you get curious about them?" I do, and sometimes I look up people on Google, but I do not want to go so far as to stalk their every move. Facebook doesn't allow you to view all information unless you add someone (most of the time). I don't want that dedication with people I haven't seen in fifteen years! I can live my life not knowing what happened to these people.
"But..pictures!" See, this is the thing. It's the "me" thing. Come look at MY pictures, COME to them. If you want to show me your pictures, put them somewhere public. Posting them JUST to Facebook indicates you only want your Facebook people to see them. You only care about THEM. There are plenty of places - photobucket, Flickr, Picasa, shutterfly, etc., that post your pictures for public view.
"I don't want everyone to see them though..." You already are. On Facebook, you can't control who sees what pictures people see and which they can't. You can filter them, but you can't go through and mark user by user who has viewing access. Also, I'm pretty sure everyone on Facebook has an e-mail address, and their e-mail program often has a bulk uploader. Taking any extra step to e-mail them to your non-Facebook friend isn't going to take up your whole afternoon. You will probably spend a couple hours on Facebook anyway.
"What about people overseas?" Here's another concept I don't like - we must keep intact with everyone, just to know how they are. Why? So you can mooch their sofa next time you go overseas? Out of all of the people you meet on vacations/trips, most will not stick with you. If you wouldn't talk to them on AIM, you do not know them well enough to have them 'friended' on Facebook. Also, the fact that they're overseas only changes three things: time zone, it's expensive to call, and it takes eons to exchange mail. There are OTHER ways to keep in contact with these people than Facebook, and the time zone thing is invalid anyway because the internet doesn't stick to specific schedule of availability. The only exception I see to this is if your contact is in the military.
The Facebook mentality is modifying relationships. Face it, not all of your friends are created equal. The English has terms for this: acquaintance, friend, comrade, pal, best friend, soul mate, lover, etc. Facebook flattens it out to one term: friend. You insult your closest friends by lowering their importance to your distant contact you Bob-something. Wouldn't you like to know if your father were getting divorced before Bob-something knew? I like when people call me. I like being texted. I like being messaged on MSN, AIM, or Skype*. I reach out to people I like, and if they care, I reach out to them too. Within the last couple months, only one friend said to me in person: I haven't seen you in a while, and I miss you, and want to hang out. This means more to me eating pancakes together at 10 PM than "omg let's hang out!!12" would do online. I did get a nice text from a friend in San Diego who was in town (thanks!). Also, I do not need a solid count of how many friends I have. That's open to my interpretation.
*"MSN, AIM, and Skype have status fields too!" They do, but go read what your friends post. Most of the time, it's a funny quip, quote, or seasonal wish. Most of the time. They don't get changed every five minutes, either.
So, yeah, fuck you Facebook. Lift up your middle finger. MySpace is morphing into a platform to promote artists and to connect international artists to overseas fans. Considering how badly the music industry is suffering, this could be useful. I got a MySpace for "business" sometime back, but I think 95% of my 60 friends are artists. Facebook is just a narcissistic me-me-me community of self-validity and importance; it places false values on societal cues; and the rest of the human race did fine before 2004. No. Thank you.