So a year on from joining twitter, have I felt the need to leave facebook? No not yet, but facebook continues to throw up (literally) the most annoying trends, over and over again. And the latest is not as easy to deal with as the 'have a look at my farm' bollocks from a few months ago. (Press the hide button.)
Now it's groups and fan pages* that have taken the helm. There are only two solutions to the muppets that seem intent on joining a new one every day. One is hide the perpetrators, which is a private way of dealing with the problem, the other is a cull.
Don't get me wrong this stuff happens on twitter, but in a different way. The sheep mentality infects us all to a degree and last week twitter, at least in the UK, seemed intent on brining down Paper Chase. Now this 'twitter as pressure group' is all well and good, but how long before we get something wrong, or pick on the wrong individual and drive them to do something awful. But from a purely selfish point of view it's far less annoying than joining a group called 'F#*K Valentines day on the 14th.. it's Pancake day on the 16th'. What is the point? I guess it's sort of become a retweet function on facebook. Someone thinks of something vaguely funny, forms a group or fan page around it and you join if you think it's amusing. Forever. Like a twat.
So I'm gonna go down the cull route.
(That's not to say I'm fucking perfect. I am not. I ballsed up on twitter today. Sorry AT. I can be a thoughtless c*** sometimes.)
What does my nut in with facebook is that it's not twitter. When it works well (and I get to see this on Thursdays with the icon post) it can be just as engaging, the trouble is twitter gives that level of engagement every day, all day. People that dip in and out of facebook never get a sense of what's going on, but that doesn't really matter, nothing is. With twitter you can easily dip in and out, because conversations change all the time, or you can just swan in and start one of your own.
I stay on facebook because there's a bunch of friends that use it well, that aren't likely to move to twitter. It's still a better place to share pictures in album form but ultimately that uniformity, that everyone loved, is now leading to a site that's dull to look at with people desperately trying to show their individuality by joining groups based around someone else's joke.
I also stay because my facebook friends now include a bunch of my twitter friends and it's another way to get a look at their lives. You know, from a purely stalker perspective. ;)
I think what the nub really comes down to is that both sites have their faults. But the faults that occur on twitter are 'our faults' a reflection of the real world. So in essence, 'some times I'm a thoughtless c***,' and that comes out, but on facebook the problems are manifested by the creators because users are almost encouraged to set up utterly pointless pages.
I also have friends on facebook who do absolutely nothing with it. I find this equally annoying but that's a tale for my other site. That totally excludes people I've picked up from twitter who do nothing with facebook, you my friends are excused. As are JMcG and theboycheese who use facebook well and I miss from twitter.
I stay on facebook because there's a bunch of friends that use it well, that aren't likely to move to twitter. It's still a better place to share pictures in album form but ultimately that uniformity, that everyone loved, is now leading to a site that's dull to look at with people desperately trying to show their individuality by joining groups based around someone else's joke.
I also stay because my facebook friends now include a bunch of my twitter friends and it's another way to get a look at their lives. You know, from a purely stalker perspective. ;)
I think what the nub really comes down to is that both sites have their faults. But the faults that occur on twitter are 'our faults' a reflection of the real world. So in essence, 'some times I'm a thoughtless c***,' and that comes out, but on facebook the problems are manifested by the creators because users are almost encouraged to set up utterly pointless pages.
I also have friends on facebook who do absolutely nothing with it. I find this equally annoying but that's a tale for my other site. That totally excludes people I've picked up from twitter who do nothing with facebook, you my friends are excused. As are JMcG and theboycheese who use facebook well and I miss from twitter.
So a year on twitter and I love it to death. Three years or so on facebook and I'm starting to think it really has lost its way.
*I'm well aware that I have a fan page for the blog. But hopefully that does serve a purpose of sorts and isn't as pointless as many many millions of others. But I suspect it might be...
I think you can probably tell from my twitter and facebook feeds how I feel about FB at the moment....
ReplyDeleteAnd I would quit it were it not for the fact that it does allow me to stay in contact with RL friends who don't tweet. Plus when Evil Twin's husband died at the end of last year, so many people posted wonderful pic of Alex, and I would have missed that if I'd not been on FB.
But FB's inability to police groups that promote any kind of hatred (not just the ones that I've been banging on about for the past month) depresses me beyond all recognition.
But then you find a group like Strange Women Lying in Ponds and Distributing Swords as a Government System which reminds you that not every group/fan page on FB was created by a total tool.
TBH I think FB will eventually implode, in the way Friends Reunited did. We just don't know what will replace it yet.