![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I have a lot of reasons to loathe Facebook, like its hideous interface and the way it's killed off usage of interactive longer-form blogging sites. But I particularly resent Facebook for showing up my less admirable qualities.
For instance, I used to pride myself on not being a grudge-holder. My anger is a flash in the pan. It flares up, I rage, say terrible things, go away, sulk for ten minutes and then it's over and I can hardly remember why I was upset in the first place. (Other people usually do, unfortunately.) So I believed myself to be fairly free of the kind of rankling resentment that afflicts many others, and I took pride in that.
Then Facebook came along.
At first it was a bit of fun on the side. I'd log on furtively for a couple of minutes a week and delight in discovering long-lost friends and relatives, exchange a few personal catch-up messages and go away feeling pleased, if slightly guilty for being unfaithful to LiveJournal.
Like all bits of fun on the side, it got complicated. People from high school that I didn't remember started sending me friend requests. I hemmed and hawed over these, dithered over pressing "Accept" or "Ignore" and let the requests go stale. Every time I logged in, there they were, staring at me like puppies waiting outside in a rainstorm.
That was bad enough. It showed me to be incapable of taking action on something that might hurt someone's feelings, even though inaction pretty much sent the same message.
The crux came when two people I distinctly remembered sent me friend requests. I learned that I am, indeed, capable of holding a grudge for a very long time. The first person had been after my high school boyfriend before he and I started dating. She was never overtly nasty to me, but you know how you can tell when someone who's being smilingly polite to you is actually imagining your head on a pike? Yeah, it was like that. Why she thought, "I'll add her!", when she saw my name on Facebook I shall never understand. We were scarcely even acquaintances then.
The second person - oh, the second person. When I left high school for university a year early, she made a big song and dance about staying in touch. I wrote her several letters. She sent none. What she did do, however, was show my letters to my erstwhile boyfriend. There was nothing incriminating in them, but they were written in confidence, and to me, that confidence is sacred. I do not read other people's mail, electronic or otherwise, and I treat the contents of letters that are addressed to me alone as exactly that. I was furious when I found out. That alone would have been enough motivation to cut her off for a good long spell (and I would certainly never trust that person beyond acquaintance level again). However, when I returned home for the summer, the person in question declined to speak to me because, "I had turned into a druggie." Leaving aside the laughability of that statement, fifteen years later I still can't tolerate someone who had broken confidence. Did she think that clicking "Add Friend" on Facebook somehow meant, "I'm sorry. Let's forget about past wrongs and start afresh now that we're older"? Because that so didn't work for me.
I had no problem clicking "Ignore" with all the petty, vindictive, grudge-holding spirit I could muster. And that's why I hate Facebook.
For instance, I used to pride myself on not being a grudge-holder. My anger is a flash in the pan. It flares up, I rage, say terrible things, go away, sulk for ten minutes and then it's over and I can hardly remember why I was upset in the first place. (Other people usually do, unfortunately.) So I believed myself to be fairly free of the kind of rankling resentment that afflicts many others, and I took pride in that.
Then Facebook came along.
At first it was a bit of fun on the side. I'd log on furtively for a couple of minutes a week and delight in discovering long-lost friends and relatives, exchange a few personal catch-up messages and go away feeling pleased, if slightly guilty for being unfaithful to LiveJournal.
Like all bits of fun on the side, it got complicated. People from high school that I didn't remember started sending me friend requests. I hemmed and hawed over these, dithered over pressing "Accept" or "Ignore" and let the requests go stale. Every time I logged in, there they were, staring at me like puppies waiting outside in a rainstorm.
That was bad enough. It showed me to be incapable of taking action on something that might hurt someone's feelings, even though inaction pretty much sent the same message.
The crux came when two people I distinctly remembered sent me friend requests. I learned that I am, indeed, capable of holding a grudge for a very long time. The first person had been after my high school boyfriend before he and I started dating. She was never overtly nasty to me, but you know how you can tell when someone who's being smilingly polite to you is actually imagining your head on a pike? Yeah, it was like that. Why she thought, "I'll add her!", when she saw my name on Facebook I shall never understand. We were scarcely even acquaintances then.
The second person - oh, the second person. When I left high school for university a year early, she made a big song and dance about staying in touch. I wrote her several letters. She sent none. What she did do, however, was show my letters to my erstwhile boyfriend. There was nothing incriminating in them, but they were written in confidence, and to me, that confidence is sacred. I do not read other people's mail, electronic or otherwise, and I treat the contents of letters that are addressed to me alone as exactly that. I was furious when I found out. That alone would have been enough motivation to cut her off for a good long spell (and I would certainly never trust that person beyond acquaintance level again). However, when I returned home for the summer, the person in question declined to speak to me because, "I had turned into a druggie." Leaving aside the laughability of that statement, fifteen years later I still can't tolerate someone who had broken confidence. Did she think that clicking "Add Friend" on Facebook somehow meant, "I'm sorry. Let's forget about past wrongs and start afresh now that we're older"? Because that so didn't work for me.
I had no problem clicking "Ignore" with all the petty, vindictive, grudge-holding spirit I could muster. And that's why I hate Facebook.
tags:
From:
no subject
Now, when people who hated me, and who made my life miserable, in middle and high school try and friend me I get kind of confused about the whole purpose of it.
I think the only thing I enjoy about it is the chance to try and verify rumours or queries I may have had about people I once knew. Like how one of my ex-boyfriends is now married with a baby, and the most homophobic bully in my high school is gay. It lets me indulge in minor pettiness, which is about the most positive thing I can say for it. And it's not that great an accolade, really.
From:
no subject
On the other hand, I've gotten back in touch with the exchange student from Australia who stayed with my family when I was 15, and we've even had a couple of delightful phone conversations. Also, I interact more with my extended Filipino family, who are scattered all over the world, because of Facebook, which is great.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
FB seems to bring out the side of a people I never realise they have, and when I finally see it, I unfriend them!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
But then again, it's also access to goods and services for free in a heartbeat, as well as good advice about homeowner type stuff and names of contractors that I've been very happy with. Right now it might be getting me some good contacts for future employment, or at least for career advice as I consider trying to shift from Programmer/Analyst to Software Engineer.
The sense of false closeness that it creates is actually really advantageous for networking type stuff. Even better, it works both ways. I will jump to offer help and information to people that I don't know that well and am not super attached to, in addition to receiving that kind of help an information. And it's low-pressure. Much easier to ignore a request that might be too difficult if you weren't addressed directly, and no feelings are hurt.
But yes, I also engage in some petty behavior, mostly wrt ignored friends requests. I also have a few of those hangers-on of folks in the local metal "scene," who don't have much to contribute to my social circle, but whom I feel I can't drop because they are too connected for it not to make waves with people I *do* care about. All the worst parts of high school, indeed.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Somehow facebook turns all the non-geeks from my past into Pokemon trainers, and I'm the pokemon.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Also, I found that if I friended people I wasn't very interested in, about twenty percent of the time they turned out to be smart and funny and I was the one being a jerk by not taking an interest in them in the first place, and the rest of the time they posted things that tipped me over from being 'meh' about them to actively hating them, their politics, their love of Flash games and their parenting philosophies. Which is not a good strike rate, really.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
My general policy with highschool people is to the appply the "how would I act if I ran into them on the street" rule. If the answer involves being pleased to see them, stopping to chat for 10 minutes, possibly suggesting we go get a coffee, then I add them.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject