I remember when I first joined Facebook back in 2006, it looked like a great way to connect with people in my life and share my thoughts, musings, and reminisce with them. Seven years later, it feels like it’s strayed so far from that. I have to wade through my news feed to see posts made by friends and acquaintances… the rest are advertisements, pages, “SHARE THIS NOW” spam, unimpressive pictures, and sometimes unfathomable stupidity.
It’s like reddit, except it takes up more room.
Facebook, for me, was a much simpler way for me to connect with people. It’s not something I can do as easily out of doors; I can’t just go to a bar or club and strike up a conversation with a total stranger. Hell, I can barely keep up mindless banter unless I’m with people I’m really close to.
It’s left me to wonder… what has become of Facebook as we once knew it? Do people really connect on it as much as they used to, or is it nothing more than a medium for pushing pictures of cats and pay-to-play fetchquest game requests? I added “things I like” to my profile so that my friends and acquaintances could find discussions through common interests, but as it turns out it’s just inundated my front page with things I’d rather just scroll past.
First there was Friendster, then there was Myspace, and now we have Facebook and Twitter. These our our social networks, but I can’t shake the feeling that my generation is ready to move on at this point to something better, just like we did 7 years ago.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
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I think you make valid points, especially in regards to moving on to better things. I hate "share this now or you hate america" stuff, and while I like pictures of cats, too make can become tiresome.
ReplyDeleteI've always felt that the purpose of Facebook and other similar social media was simply to maintain contact with people that it would other wise be very difficult to. To help close the chasm of distance and busy schedules between friends.
I do, and always always have, preferred face to face contact when I have the ability. However personally I have a lot of very close friends that live far away and Facebook has helped exponentially to help us keep in contact, even if it is just a "like" on their page, it allows me to share things with them like when we were roommates. That is Facebooks value to me still.
You are right though, it is different and in a lot of ways worse. Facebook has indeed become more commercial. It is more work than it used to be to keep facebook as a means of connection rather then just another way to try and get people to buy things. I ignore tons and tons of requests all the time, and about half of my newsfeed is stuff I really dont care about but It's not enough to make me give up the benefit I mentioned previously.
Still I would welcome something better, and would happily move if and when it comes to pass.