The facebook quandary

[gothaminserenia]

At the reunion, many people asked if I was on facebook. And after some searching, I found many who are on it ... and I think it'd be fun to reconnect with some of them again. Quite a few other friends are on there as well, many of whom I don't keep in touch with as often as I should. So I've been seriously considering joining

Comments

[gothaminserenia]

Yes, apparently there's a way to do that.

Using google, I searched some exact phrases which I'd written in my older public posts, and none came up as a search result. So I dug into my journal's settings, which you could do as well ...

- when you first login to your journal & it says "Welcome back to Livejournal!", click on the Account link on top next to your username
- this pulls up the "My Account Settings" page.
- click on the Privacy tab.
- you'll find a checkbox for "Search Inclusion - Minimize my journal's inclusion in search engine results"
- there's a Save button at the bottom

Mine had been checked, so apparently it works!

[bohemianrapsody]

You can control if you want search results available outside of Facebook on a search engine.
You can also just have your profile availbel to friends only, if you choose.

[gothaminserenia]

Great to know, thank you.

And my guess is, after seeing my post about this, you must've modified your own facebook settings. I had run across you on there before (via someone else's list of friends). But now I cannot pull up your profile (presumably unless I login to facebook) nor are you shown on anyone else's lists of friends. So whatever you did, it sure worked!

That's exactly the sort of invisibility I'm looking for. I imagine your profile may be displayed once I'd have an account & be friended with you, but at that point it'd be ok. I'm most wary of random people trying to do a search ... and I've heard it's become routine for employers to search for employees & applicants on facebook.

[wodurid]

For a lot of the resons you've offered I've never had any hankering to go on Facebood. MySpaz is junky-lookin enough, but it seems it is the only way to contact some folks.

But yeah, just have a mundane vanilla Face book page for mundane vanilla social purposes. After all, you don't *have* to list your real-actual political or social penchants on your profile. Just put down you are a football fan, you'd like to take walks in the park with a "special girl," that you listen to Garth Brooks and Kenney Chesney on the radio, are "a spiritual person" and that you think Jessica Simpson and Megan Fox are really hot.

I'm gonna go sit on the patio now,,,,,

[gothaminserenia]

Yeah, I'd have to tone it down. The people I'd reach out to there are very likely standard Democrats, Republicans, & even Christians. Most prolly don't even know what "goth" is. That's too bad ... I think the philosophical/social/political discussions are the most interesting, because you can find out how someone thinks and thus find out who they are.

C'mon now, you don't think Megan Fox is smokin hot?!

[wodurid]

Fox is indeed smokin, ... but alas, the media have made her much overexposed to the unwashed petty bourgeois masses. She’d be much more appealing in an underground cult figure sorta way. Like Betty Paige or … Dita Von Teese (when she was with M. Manson) Thinkin now of that other Manson now that Roman Polanski is back in the news, and the fortieth anniversary of Helter Skelter, I’d like to see Fox play Susan Atkins in a movie.

[gothaminserenia]

Well, I imagine Fox is happy making far more money as a mainstream movie star than she would in the underground cult scene.

I'm surprised it took the media this long to catch onto her. Watching the Transformers movie two years ago, I was like WOW, that's the hottest actress I'd seen in years. Now that she's on the cover of Rolling Stone & several other mags, I've read remarks by her that indicate the sudden fame may be going to her head. But she's just the latest Young Thing to be trotted out by the Hollywood machine. Odds are against her having the staying power of a Demi Moore or a Jodie Foster.

But in the meantime we can enjoy her nonetheless. ;-)

^ what they said

[rskm1]

Plus, you can turn off email notifications selectively, so if you don't want 'em, you can go without any annoying reminders that you even HAVE a facebook page. Then just visit it once a month (or year, or whatever).

I resisted for a while, but finally caved because there are a few highschool buddies that use it and aren't on LJ. It's been pretty painless...

Re: ^ what they said

[gothaminserenia]

It's sounding like facebook can be set up quite privately, so it's looking promising.

Do you use your real name on there, or do you have a pseudonym? Have you tried searching for yourself, to see what others could dig up on you?

Re: ^ what they said

[rskm1]

Using a pseudonym on facebook would pretty much defeat the whole purpose. I use my real name, and the same avatar I use everywhere else, but for me, none of that has ever been a secret (hell, I signed all my gothling.com posts with my full name for years as a humorous gimmick!)

For your situation, I'd recommend making a facebook of your "real" self, but DON'T make any sort of logical connection to your gothaminserenia accounts, and don't use the same avatar, and don't facebook-friend any of your LJ friends.

Your LJ friends already know who you are on LJ, so we won't be offended if you don't associate your facebook account with ours (hell, we won't even know about its existence unless you start friending mutual friends there). Especially since you'll just be talking about football and cheese and celebrity gossip anyway, heehee =)

Re: ^ what they said

[rskm1]

P.S.

facebook does auto-lookups based on email contact lists / address books (even going as far as importing them from hotmail or yahoo!), so if you follow my advice above, make sure you don't use your ***************@h***m*** account when you sign up on facebook!

Keep the two things *completely* separate, and if you happen to run into any family or highschool friends that you WANT to associate more closely with, tell 'em to get on LJ and friend you there, separately.

[deadpansev]

I haven't joined Facebook, partly because I hated MySpace so much and have never been able to get my account canceled on Myspace. I am already getting more and more leery of the information that is out there about me. There is a part of me that thinks being public is the safest path, and another part of me that wants to protect my privacy more than I have in the past.

[gothaminserenia]

Everyone who's talked to me about MySpace said it sucks. I've never heard a positive comment on it. It seems like MySpace may be dying off now. I never joined it.

I think the less people can find out about you, the better. That way, you're in control of what people know. The main problem with the internet & computers is that once information is out there on you, it's difficult or impossible to get rid of it.

From the feedback I'm hearing here, it sounds like Facebook has some good privacy options.