I started using FB right when it opened up to regular folk as opposed to only university students with a .edu email address. I have watched the website change a lot over the years, and to be honest, I can't stand it anymore, and actually have pretty much hated it for at least a couple of years if not longer. I kind of liked it at first but I sure have a lot of resentment towards it now. It's an awful website and causes way more problems and opportunities for social faux pas for me than anything else.
I don't like that the 'friendships' are very shallow, I don't like the cavalier way that they've handled privacy issues, the monetization going critical mass to the point where it interferes with the user experience so much that it is analogous to a flyer you get as junk mail, all the intrusive and obnoxious advertising, spammers and scammers, the ~drahma~, not listening to user feedback, I guess I should just say that I have myriad criticisms of FB and leave it at that. Actually just one more thing because it's very important- I greatly disparage the fact that they try to micromanage the user experience and essentially force us to use the website the way that they want, in very forceful terms that they keep changing just when you get comfortable with a thing. They are also very unfriendly to addons that help make it a better experience, like Social Fixer. I fail to see how it hurts anyone if I am not telling FB and the world my phone number and where I went to high school, yet they harrass me pretty much weekly for that info even though I tell it to bug off. As an introvert, a relatively open yet private person, and especially obviously an aspie, who is sensitive to stimuli and who has a different method of socialising, I've just had it with that place and it can burn for all I care. It's too stressful.
I had to actually create a whole new profile a year and a half ago because I made the big mistake of adding my family members on my original one, as well as my being too polite to deny friend requests from people that encountered me from groups and others that somehow found me through other places like that friend finder thing. I learned my lesson hard, and I don't accept unsolicited friend requests anymore and I don't feel guilty about it either. I have a right to privacy, as do we all. I also added a few old high school/YA friends (pretty much the last time that I had friends IRL really) and I had great intentions at first, I was hopeful and thought that it would be something positive, but it just ended up making me feel like a worthless piece of doo. Oh man, some of the comments that my family left on my wall, gee thanks for undoing 6 months of therapy, lol.
Overall it's been a net negative in my life and I've tried to escape from it, but the sad fact is, my social life would be just about gone if I left. I recently made the decision to greatly limit my interaction there, and I won't ever be posting anything even remotely personal again. I met most of my closest friends over a decade ago on webforums or through gaming or music, and I ended up creating a new forum for us as a solution, and plan to craft it with a certain atmosphere that FB would never provide, amenable to actual discussions about interesting topics. So far 8 people I know have followed me there but we're still building so the new forum isn't active yet. I want a place that is the anti-FB, a place for creatives and old school nerds, gamers, etc with the 'feel' of our forums of old, where it was a real community (and is also why I am so happy to be a part of these forums, and thanks to everyone for being such great people).
I personally feel that social networking in the manner of FB is going to go the way of the dodo eventually, and microcommunities like forums will come back en vogue. Time will tell.
So that ended up being quite a rant. It's something that has been a real stressor for me for awhile now but it finally caught up with me. The funny thing is that I originally fell in love with the internet because it was an escape from all the crap in the Real World. Then I realized with horror, that the internet and FB specifically have essentially become the mainstream now, and it isn't a nerd's paradise anymore, aside from small enclaves if you're lucky enough to find them. I found that so very depressing. There was a reason I didn't overly involve myself with my family and kept my distance from them as well as the general public, and to realize that I invited them in like it was Salem's Lot, oh man. That was a real 'doh' moment. I just can't handle the social complexities and styles that NT's demand.
) ) anyway, I didn't really plan to make friends or anything because wasn't quite sure how that's going to work out. Facebook design seems confusing and a little annoying for me, so if it wasn't the ultimate social network builder of our time I would never go there...
