Facebook and social media disillusion

[Demetra2]

To the OP, I think it was a good experiment and you received insights into the limitations of facebook. I applaud you for trying to reach out in real time to your facebook “friends”. It is realistic to expect many facebook “friends” to be busy and not able to get together. Some of these people in reality are acquaintances and not actually true friends. But it is interesting that people constantly post photos and give updates of their daily lives as if everybody cares about the mundane details. Are we all narcissists now? I think we all know that it is impossible to have hundreds or thousands of true friends. I think a person is extremely lucky in life to have a handful of true friends, so don’t be too disappointed by the results of this experiment.

 

[Rose71]

I think Facebook can unleash latent narcism in all of us! I’m just waiting for someone to make a spoof ‘Duck Dynasty’ style documentary about a bunch of mad keen fisherman getting all their gear together and then huddling round a laptop to ‘fish for some huge compliments’

 

[aroosi]

But it is interesting that people constantly post photos and give updates of their daily lives as if everybody cares about the mundane details. Are we all narcissists now? .

Yup, very reasonable question. I clearly remember once a ‘friend’ that I barely remember from college, posted for everybod to see, a live update about her bowel movement status. And there is this other lady that sends regularly a daily selfie (just in case we forgot how she looks like). She would be just a perfect pair with the one that is posting how many miles she run and with the friend that has the courtesy to inform me (with documenting picture) what is in her menu. Seriously… why??? Thankfully there is the unfollow option…

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Yup, very reasonable question. I clearly remember once a ‘friend’ that I barely remember from college, posted for everybod to see, a live update about her bowel movement status. And there is this other lady that sends regularly a daily selfie (just in case we forgot how she looks like). She would be just a perfect pair with the one that is posting how many miles she run and with the friend that has the courtesy to inform me (with documenting picture) what is in her menu. Seriously… why??? Thankfully there is the unfollow option…

And I always thought my life was too boring to have anything to post on FB.

I do think FB, Twitter, etc. does serves a purpose for some people such as those who have many family/friends who have moved away, and while I don’t use social media myself, I do admit to sometimes looking at posts on social media accounts of celebrities or of organizations. Many small business use FB accounts in lieu of full-fledged “websites”.

I personally don’t use it because it just feeds into my ASD tendencies, it took me many years to figure out how to interact with people face to face and I don’t want to backslide.

 

[Rahn]

I’ve started to prefer WhatsApp. Being able to quickly communicate with people who don’t live near me is very important but I don’t feel the need to post stuff about my life so publicly.

We’re using Whats App now and it’s quite good.

 

[victrolatim]

I use mine as a tool to have discussions in various hobby groups, keep connected with people I rarely see, and follow organizations and news outlets. I never put anything personal on my page and have manually set all of my security settings as close as I can to emulate Fort Knox (except the snipers walked out on me, they wanted to unionize).

One year, I did shut my page down for Lent. I gave my followers fair warning. The reaction was both scary and hilarious. People literally acted like I was announcing the day of my own death. Some pled for me not to go, others wrote me things like “How will we get in touch with you???”. My life is not that interesting. I kindly reminded folks that my e-mail address was on my page and that there is this little device with buttons that when you punch in a specific ten digit sequence, my voice will magically come out of the speaker on the device and we can have a conversation…sheer witchcraft.

 

[Lea101]

For Lent I decided, among other things, to decrease a lot the amount of time spent browsing social media and to focus more on real life. Part of my plan was to contact people I interact regularly with in Facebook and live not too far; they are not strangers since I very rarely accept friend requests from people I never met in person. I invited them in real life for a coffee, lunch or just a brief chat and the results were pretty disheartening. Except for few lovely exceptions, most people that constanly clog my newsfeed with their pictures, rants, political views, opinions and that are ready to drop a heart or a like at every post, are actuallly too busy for real life or simply unavailable for a deeper relationship.This ‘experiment’ changed my view of social media a lot. I considered it a fun tool to keep in touch with friends but I realized that often is a surrogate for real friendship, a collection of informations hiding emptiness and sometimes just a plain load of ****.

I admit I’m one of those people that would talk to you online, but would probably use every excuse possible to avoid real life interaction.

I am such a huge introvert with a lot of insecurity and anxiety and I really like social media because I have some sort of control. Not a good thing at all, I admit.

I think it’s one of those things that older people won’t appreciate immediately because it’s very different from what they are used to. I don’t know if that’s offensive, but that’s just my observations. The older people don’t see the point in updating everyone about their lives, sharing pictures of food, stuff like that Meanwhile, people my age would take a picture of a broken glass bottle with the caption “same” and we would all get it. Selfies aren’t weird, it’s “just there”. Generational thing, I suppose. It’s not about being true friends, but just more of seeing people’s day-to-day lives. A little creepy, isn’t it.

Social media is an excellent (raising awareness. The famine in Somalia, for example. Lots of people raised so much money to help, and convinced Turkish Airlines to help out as well) and dangerous (so many lies to discredit people, bullying, fake news) tool.

 

[aroosi]

One year, I did shut my page down for Lent. I gave my followers fair warning. The reaction was both scary and hilarious. People literally acted like I was announcing the day of my own death. Some pled for me not to go, others wrote me things like “How will we get in touch with you???”. My life is not that interesting. I kindly reminded folks that my e-mail address was on my page and that there is this little device with buttons that when you punch in a specific ten digit sequence, my voice will magically come out of the speaker on the device and we can have a conversation…sheer witchcraft.

This call for an other ‘experiment’. Let’s say you could shut off Facebook for one or two weeks without any kind of public announcement; it would be interesting to see if/how the very same distraught people would notice it and try to get in touch with you.

 

[SuperHappy]

I like social media but only to a certain extent.

I think too many people take it too far though and believe that only what’s on the screen is reality. What we see is what people choose to project to us there. It’s not like real face-to-face interaction where we can discern what is actually real. I have a friend with 5 children and they are constantly fighting, throwing their toys around, generally misbehaving and being kids, being around them for very long is very hard! But on her social media she has so many photos of these same children in pressed clothes holding hands and smiling big. That’s the reality of what she posts. What she lives is 1000% different though.

The best thing is to take social media for what it is and vet your timelines to reflect things that truly interest you such as news sites, catholic pages, hobbies, etc and just use people’s personal pages for when you’d like to keep up with them.

 

[Luvz2travel]

Facebook and other social media have their uses and can be a good thing as long as it doesn’t become your whole world. I don’t even have a computer myself but do have a dataphone and am on it more then I should be but then again I can get off and go into the woods and leave it all behind easily.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

I like social media but only to a certain extent.

I think too many people take it too far though and believe that only what’s on the screen is reality. What we see is what people choose to project to us there. It’s not like real face-to-face interaction where we can discern what is actually real. I have a friend with 5 children and they are constantly fighting, throwing their toys around, generally misbehaving and being kids, being around them for very long is very hard! But on her social media she has so many photos of these same children in pressed clothes holding hands and smiling big. That’s the reality of what she posts. What she lives is 1000% different though.

That is another reason I don’t see much point in becoming obsessive about social media. For many people, what they post on FB is as “real” as “reality TV”. And I also find it very disturbing when people assume what they see on TV about the Kardashians, Duggars, etc. is totally “real”, and say things about them, as if they really know those people well, no you don’t.

I do visit some FB sites, and as I do not have an account there is a nag window that covers the bottom of the screen (though I can scroll past it) that prompts me to sign up or log in to be actually a good thing as it is annoying enough to keep me from spending too much time there.

 

[Luvz2travel]

That is another reason I don’t see much point in becoming obsessive about social media. For many people, what they post on FB is as “real” as “reality TV”. And I also find it very disturbing when people assume what they see on TV about the Kardashians, Duggars, etc. is totally “real”, and say things about them, as if they really know those people well, no you don’t.

I do visit some FB sites, and as I do not have an account there is a nag window that covers the bottom of the screen (though I can scroll past it) that prompts me to sign up or log in to be actually a good thing as it is annoying enough to keep me from spending too much time there.

Yeah I don’t know anything about the Kardashians or the Duggars and could care less. I use social media mainly to stay in touch with friends and dump my hiking pictures.