St. Patrick's Day: Another reason to dislike Facebook

[Galbin]

It doesn’t have much significance anymore because Ireland managed to undo what St. Patrick did in about a generation. Not a very Catholic country anymore.

Have you ever been to Ireland? Attended mass there? Read the latest census that 97% of the population are Catholics? Yeah…

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

As far as my wife goes, I keep trying to convince her to delete or unfollow half her friends since she won’t give it up entirely. It really doesn’t serve much purpose other than making her upset. I’ll occasionally go through and unfollow the ones who anger her the most, or who post the most inappropriate stuff. That’s helped a little, but so many of her friends are so annoying that to cut out all the frustration I’d have to unfollow over 90% of the people on there.

I have about 200 “friends” on facebook. Most are in the 25-35 year old range. Only a few are religious. In 5 years on facebook, I think I’ve unfriended 2 people, maybe 3 tops. About 1% or so. I’ve seen (and been in a few) drinking pictures, but I don’t recall ever seeing a “drunk toilet” picture. I’m sure someone has posted a religious or political view that I disagree with but I can’t even recall an incident off the top of my head. I’ve seen a friend or two in a bikini-OK, I move on, not like it’s pornography.

I’m not saying that your experience necessarily ought to be like mine, nor am I trying to imply anything about you or your wife. However, I am honest-to-goodness confused about what’s going on with your facebook accounts.

You have listed figures–in the quoted post “90%” which is probably an exaggeration, since elsewhere you have mentioned “half” several times. So, I’m going to go with “half.” You—and your wife both feel the need to unfollow/block half of your friends. Why? Doesn’t it seem at all odd to you? Again, not trying to suggest anything negative about you or your wife I just–honest to goodness, I don’t understand how that’s even possible… to have befriended THAT may people that cause you such anger. Can you explain further? What–surely it isn’t half of them that are posting drunk toilet pictures, right, what else is going on here that accounts for half of them?

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I have about 200 “friends” on facebook. Most are in the 25-35 year old range. Only a few are religious. In 5 years on facebook, I think I’ve unfriended 2 people, maybe 3 tops. About 1% or so. I’ve seen (and been in a few) drinking pictures, but I don’t recall ever seeing a “drunk toilet” picture. I’m sure someone has posted a religious or political view that I disagree with but I can’t even recall an incident off the top of my head. I’ve seen a friend or two in a bikini-OK, I move on, not like it’s pornography.

I’m not saying that your experience necessarily ought to be like mine, nor am I trying to imply anything about you or your wife. However, I am honest-to-goodness confused about what’s going on with your facebook accounts.

You have listed figures–in the quoted post “90%” which is probably an exaggeration, since elsewhere you have mentioned “half” several times. So, I’m going to go with “half.” You—and your wife both feel the need to unfollow/block half of your friends. Why? Doesn’t it seem at all odd to you? Again, not trying to suggest anything negative about you or your wife I just–honest to goodness, I don’t understand how that’s even possible… to have befriended THAT may people that cause you such anger. Can you explain further? What–surely it isn’t half of them that are posting drunk toilet pictures, right, what else is going on here that accounts for half of them?

Not all of them are posting drunk toilet pictures, but there are plenty who post inappropriate content, a lot of which involves drinking. Each of our accounts have a mixture of family, close friends, old family friends, acquaintances, coworkers, high school and grade school friends (plus a tiny percent that fall into the “other” category). Most of the people left on my account are ones who I have a reason to keep in touch with, whether it’s because I enjoy hearing from them and want to keep in touch, or because we’re the ones who work on reunions, projects or other things together. I’m guessing as many as 5-10% of the people on my account are ones I could get rid of and neither I nor they would notice. Of the ones left on my account, there are those whose posts are grossly inappropriate (like the one who’s always posting drunken, nearly-naked pictures of her and her friends) or extremely inflammatory (the hate-filled atheist who posts anti-Catholic rants and links to pro-abortion, anti-religious or pornographic sites). Some of them are mind-numbingly inane (post nothing but annoying memes then like their own posts), or have nearly unbearable personalities (the two-faced narcissist, the one who spoils her kids to an obscene degree, the paranoid conspiracy theorist, the depressed, misogynistic loner, etc.). Others seem to only exist to put others down or post Instagrammed pictures of themselves, their pets, their cars or their food. At least 20% of my friends never post anything other than occasionally liking happy birthday posts on their walls. Then there’s the core group I like to hear from who are generally positive, supportive, upstanding people. They’re the reasons I check it in the morning.

As far as the others go, I would delete them in a heartbeat if it wouldn’t cause problems. I know that, for some of them, I’m going to have to work with them again at some point so blocking them from Facebook would make that awkward. With some, me deleting them would anger others to the point that it’s far easier to keep them as friends. A lot of them are the ones I’ve unfollowed. Then there’s a small handful of family members and friends who I’m genuinely concerned about but who are so immoral and/or self-destructive that it’s a struggle to not delete them. These are people we were very close with in the past, but from whom we’ve grown apart. We don’t want to close the door on them entirely, but they make that difficult on us. It’s gotten a lot easier to unfollow people, and somewhat easier to unfriend/block them entirely.

Regarding my wife’s account, she worries that not accepting a friend request or unfriending someone is rude and could hurt their feelings, so she accepts every friend request she gets. She’s up to almost 400 friends. Most of these are people from high school who she didn’t even like back then. Looking over her account, I counted a grand total of 13 people she actually interacts with and enjoys hearing from, so she could unfollow/unfriend about 97% of her “friends” and turn her Facebook into something she’d actually enjoy. The unsavory parts of her page are similar to mine but worse. Usually far worse. Her page is usually full of people airing dirty laundry, people fighting with their spouse/significant other, vulgarity-filled posts/memes, most of which are about drinking or casual sex, etc. A few times a week I’ll go through her page when nobody else is around and delete as much inappropriate stuff as I can. I respect her boundaries so it actually takes a lot for me to unfollow or block someone on her account, but if they cross a line it doesn’t bother me to delete them.

I think what it comes down to is that we’re different people than we were when we befriended a lot of these people years ago. We’ve grown and matured and have different values than we had then. A lot of the people we know are stuck in their early 20’s. Like I mentioned earlier, a large part of their lives is devoted to drinking, partying, drinking, playing drinking games, drinking, drinking and drinking. My 20-year-old self could drink any five of them under the table, then chug a pint of Jack, then drive on to the next bar for a night of darts, cheap pitchers and shots of tequila. But I’m not 20 anymore, and I don’t care to be. Something I’ve been doing, and something I’d like my wife to do more of, is determining which relationships are worth keeping and fostering and which ones we’re better off without.

 

[DMC12]

Not all of them are posting drunk toilet pictures, but there are plenty who post inappropriate content, a lot of which involves drinking. Each of our accounts have a mixture of family, close friends, old family friends, acquaintances, coworkers, high school and grade school friends (plus a tiny percent that fall into the “other” category). Most of the people left on my account are ones who I have a reason to keep in touch with, whether it’s because I enjoy hearing from them and want to keep in touch, or because we’re the ones who work on reunions, projects or other things together. I’m guessing as many as 5-10% of the people on my account are ones I could get rid of and neither I nor they would notice. Of the ones left on my account, there are those whose posts are grossly inappropriate (like the one who’s always posting drunken, nearly-naked pictures of her and her friends) or extremely inflammatory (the hate-filled atheist who posts anti-Catholic rants and links to pro-abortion, anti-religious or pornographic sites). Some of them are mind-numbingly inane (post nothing but annoying memes then like their own posts), or have nearly unbearable personalities (the two-faced narcissist, the one who spoils her kids to an obscene degree, the paranoid conspiracy theorist, the depressed, misogynistic loner, etc.). Others seem to only exist to put others down or post Instagrammed pictures of themselves, their pets, their cars or their food. At least 20% of my friends never post anything other than occasionally liking happy birthday posts on their walls. Then there’s the core group I like to hear from who are generally positive, supportive, upstanding people. They’re the reasons I check it in the morning.

As far as the others go, I would delete them in a heartbeat if it wouldn’t cause problems. I know that, for some of them, I’m going to have to work with them again at some point so blocking them from Facebook would make that awkward. With some, me deleting them would anger others to the point that it’s far easier to keep them as friends. A lot of them are the ones I’ve unfollowed. Then there’s a small handful of family members and friends who I’m genuinely concerned about but who are so immoral and/or self-destructive that it’s a struggle to not delete them. These are people we were very close with in the past, but from whom we’ve grown apart. We don’t want to close the door on them entirely, but they make that difficult on us. It’s gotten a lot easier to unfollow people, and somewhat easier to unfriend/block them entirely.

Regarding my wife’s account, she worries that not accepting a friend request or unfriending someone is rude and could hurt their feelings, so she accepts every friend request she gets. She’s up to almost 400 friends. Most of these are people from high school who she didn’t even like back then. Looking over her account, I counted a grand total of 13 people she actually interacts with and enjoys hearing from, so she could unfollow/unfriend about 97% of her “friends” and turn her Facebook into something she’d actually enjoy. The unsavory parts of her page are similar to mine but worse. Usually far worse. Her page is usually full of people airing dirty laundry, people fighting with their spouse/significant other, vulgarity-filled posts/memes, most of which are about drinking or casual sex, etc. A few times a week I’ll go through her page when nobody else is around and delete as much inappropriate stuff as I can. I respect her boundaries so it actually takes a lot for me to unfollow or block someone on her account, but if they cross a line it doesn’t bother me to delete them.

I think what it comes down to is that we’re different people than we were when we befriended a lot of these people years ago. We’ve grown and matured and have different values than we had then. A lot of the people we know are stuck in their early 20’s. Like I mentioned earlier, a large part of their lives is devoted to drinking, partying, drinking, playing drinking games, drinking, drinking and drinking. My 20-year-old self could drink any five of them under the table, then chug a pint of Jack, then drive on to the next bar for a night of darts, cheap pitchers and shots of tequila. But I’m not 20 anymore, and I don’t care to be. Something I’ve been doing, and something I’d like my wife to do more of, is determining which relationships are worth keeping and fostering and which ones we’re better off without.

I repeat, do not let your kids to see your facebook pages. it is not for them.

now about your wife’s facebook, what you do is I would say, innapropiate, you did not marry a 10 YO, instead of that you should teach her, to not letting anyone there, there are dangerous people out there who can use the FB info to harm you and the others, and well, her point of view, ask her why does she lets those peoples in there, and convince her to delete them, if they have to go.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I repeat, do not let your kids to see your facebook pages. it is not for them.

now about your wife’s facebook, what you do is I would say, innapropiate, you did not marry a 10 YO, instead of that you should teach her, to not letting anyone there, there are dangerous people out there who can use the FB info to harm you and the others, and well, her point of view, ask her why does she lets those peoples in there, and convince her to delete them, if they have to go.

It’s not so much a matter of letting them see it as a matter of fact that, as long as we have a computer, there’s a likelihood that they will occasionally see what’s on it. Even my email account, which I only check on my locked computer, is something they occasionally see. That’s why I ended up having to block the email address of an old friend who insisted on sending out pornographic emails. As much as I didn’t want to see them, I was even more bothered by the idea of my kids seeing them (to be clear, it wasn’t the emails themselves, just the subject lines they could possibly see, which were bad enough that I didn’t want my kids seeing them). One of the lengthiest interactions I ever had on Facebook was a year or two after I opened my account. Most of the inappropriate content I was seeing at that time was coming from people who not only had kids, but had allowed them to get their own accounts and had them as friends so their own kids were getting their parents’ inappropriate posts on their own walls. Someone posted something pretty bad one day and, after unfriending them, I updated my status, assuring my friends that they’d never have to worry about me posting something that they would be embarrassed to read at work or around their kids. It raised quite a stir and while some friends thanked me for posting it, others attacked me and defended their write to post slutty pictures, graphic descriptions of things they’d done, links to pornographic websites, etc. I axed a few of them and altered my privacy settings for a few others. I’ve also been pretty vigilant about my kids’ exposure to it since then, but over the last year and a half or so the level and degree of inappropriate content seems to have grown. The fact that so many people use Facebook as their primary form of communication now just exacerbates the problem.

As far as my wife’s account goes, since she only uses the family computer, hers is the one our kids are most likely to see. She has no problem with me going through and deleting posts. If I block or unfriend someone, as long as I tell her about it afterward, she typically doesn’t have a problem with it. For the most part, I’ll unfollow them, tell her about it, then she has the option of either re-following them, leaving them as is, or getting rid of them. The only ones I’ve deleted and blocked without asking first are the handful of guys from her high school who have propositioned her.