I originally joined Facebook in Carol's name so she could have a way to contact relatives and friends beside email. She tried it and absolutely hated it, so I “deactivated” her account. (There doesn't seem to be any way to completely delete a Facebook account or your personal information.)
Later I decided to try it myself for a month or so to see what it was like. I found some other facebookers that I knew, or that I was related to, and became “friends” with them. It was kind of fun. Then I started receiving news from friends of friends, people who I didn't know and really didn't care to know. I tried adjusting the settings but how do you “de-friend” someone's relatives without feeling guilty about hurting their feelings. Pretty soon my page had so many strangers staring out at me it was like going to someone else's high school reunion.
Then came the proselytizers pushing their religious or political beliefs. If I really wanted to know their opinion, which I don't, I would have asked them. (To be fair though, the same people send the same crap in email.) Then there were “pokes” and “hearts,” on-line games to play and clubs to join.
I tried to join into the spirit of things, but I felt like a parent intruding on a game his teen aged daughter was playing at a pajama party. I did find a fellow Parkinson's Disease sufferer who started a Parkinson's club, and I joined it. All of a sudden I had all of his relatives and friends on my page updating, liking, hearting and poking their friends and relatives.
The people that we really care about have our email address, and I'd much rather get a note from them than get “hearted,” “poked” or “liked”.
I write about the boring stuff in our lives on this blog, mainly for our friends and family and I think there are maybe 3 or 4 people who regularly read it. If I thought that there were hundreds of strangers reading the silly stuff I usually write about, I'd probably quit in embarrassment.
I guess I'm just an old curmudgeon.
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