Should I Stay or Should I Go.

[j_v_lynch]

Gentle Readers,

Like about 20% of the earth's population, I have a Facebook account. I have about 4 times the median number of "friends". All but a few handfulls of those are people that I have met and interact with on a reasonably regular basis. I very much enjoy reading about their lives and when (not if) they post something I don't care about I can just ignore or hide it.

I still hate it.

I hate it because for many people that I know, it's the only way they send out information. If I didn't read their Facebook I wouldn't know about half of what's going on in their lives. Granted, the Facebook algorithm does seem to bring information about births and deaths to the forefront, but there is no longer any way to sort my feed in any rational fashion so I'm just getting a random selection of posts. Also, I don't think it is reasonable to expect people to make a special effort to contact me about things they would just post on Facebook.

I guess that makes sense in terms of sticking eyeballs. It uses the same random reward mechanism that makes gambling so addictive. If I just keep looking long enough I'll be rewarded with a piece of amazing news from a friend (or a picture of a kitten) so I keep looking through the dross and banality and vaguebooking in the hopes of finding that gold nugget. I'm lucky in that the majority of people I have friended post interesting stuff, but that just increases the addiction to scrolling down.

I hate it because it prevents me from following the best advice on the internet: Don't Read The Comments. Really, a more accurate statement is don't read unmoderated comments, but that's what Facebook is: reams and reams of unmoderated comments. This wouldn't be so bad in general since I can usually exert enough willpower to not click through and read comments on other peoples posts. However, I can't stop them from commenting on my posts without blocking access to my posts completely. I don't post to start a conversation. However, the presumed closeness/intimacy makes it easy for people to respond. This is exacerbated by the tendency to provide unsolicited information (or even Mansplain). I know because I do it too (although hopefully without too much Mansplaining).

I hate it because people I don't know very well see it as a venue for sharing their deepest thoughts and frequently those deep thoughts are ill considered and do not add to my opinions of that person. Similarly people who have brilliant thoughts on things I care a great deal about (i.e. Swordplay) but also share disappointing thoughts about other things and make me think less of them (i.e. Conservative/Libertarian politics).

To sum up:

Reason to Go:

• Near Infinite Filler


• Comments that I don't want to read[1]


• False Intimacy

Reason to Stay:

• Random Reward Dopamine response.


• Information Unavailable Anywhere Else


• Inertia

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[1] For the record, There is no one who I expect to read this post who's comments I do not enjoy reading.

Comments

[ironjeff]

My FacePlant account exists solely to monitor the doings of meatspace friends and family members who do not use other communications methods...

[j_v_lynch]

I just need to be able to stop monitoring.

[andrewducker]

I have FB so I can scan through things and be invited to events. Mostly the latter.

I generally expect people to have ridiculous opinions, so FB hasn't upset me too much :->

[j_v_lynch]

it's when they expect me to participate in their ridiculous opinions or start/trigger an argument in my post's comments that I get upset.