Earlier this week, this came across my path:
7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook
After I was done reading it, my initial thought was "So there's nothing that belongs in a Facebook status update. OK." A lot of commenters to that article disagreed, and even dismissed the list as the author just having a bad day, or falling back on the ol' "So quit Facebook already, it sucks."
I wish there was some positive "what to say on Facebook" info in that post. But even without that, here's the point I drew from it: Some messages have different audiences. Very few messages are interesting to all audiences. The author of the HuffPo piece claims something like 800 "friends." This certainly stretches the traditional definition of "friends." I'm not sure I've met 800 people by name in my whole life, and I perform concerts and used to go out to bars and such. I have something like 230 Facebook friends. This includes my sister and many of my cousins, my best friends from college, and partners from past relationships. It also includes a bunch of people who saw me play music a few times and nothing more, or maybe just liked the way my profile photo looked — and people in between. Obviously, they don't all care about everything I think. In fact, I don't often say much on Facebook just because of that. When I do, I usually rely on something intended to be light and jokey.
Facebook does have a function that lets you post a status to certain groups of people. It's probably way underused. It's so easy to just send out something to all your friends, and rely on those who don't want to know to just scroll by. It may not be much more difficult for us status posters to decide who might be interested and tell only them. I admit I have not explored this possibility enough, myself, but I will. Then I'll probably say more, although most of my "friends" may not realize it. I'll get all moony-eyed over the U.P. but only my friends from college and Marquette will know, say.
The HuffPo article left out something annoying about Facebook statuses: repostings of political and social items. What, we're all party operatives now? If we're "friends," traditionally there are two things that aren't supposed to come up: Politics and religion. How 'bout them apples?
7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook
After I was done reading it, my initial thought was "So there's nothing that belongs in a Facebook status update. OK." A lot of commenters to that article disagreed, and even dismissed the list as the author just having a bad day, or falling back on the ol' "So quit Facebook already, it sucks."
I wish there was some positive "what to say on Facebook" info in that post. But even without that, here's the point I drew from it: Some messages have different audiences. Very few messages are interesting to all audiences. The author of the HuffPo piece claims something like 800 "friends." This certainly stretches the traditional definition of "friends." I'm not sure I've met 800 people by name in my whole life, and I perform concerts and used to go out to bars and such. I have something like 230 Facebook friends. This includes my sister and many of my cousins, my best friends from college, and partners from past relationships. It also includes a bunch of people who saw me play music a few times and nothing more, or maybe just liked the way my profile photo looked — and people in between. Obviously, they don't all care about everything I think. In fact, I don't often say much on Facebook just because of that. When I do, I usually rely on something intended to be light and jokey.
Facebook does have a function that lets you post a status to certain groups of people. It's probably way underused. It's so easy to just send out something to all your friends, and rely on those who don't want to know to just scroll by. It may not be much more difficult for us status posters to decide who might be interested and tell only them. I admit I have not explored this possibility enough, myself, but I will. Then I'll probably say more, although most of my "friends" may not realize it. I'll get all moony-eyed over the U.P. but only my friends from college and Marquette will know, say.
The HuffPo article left out something annoying about Facebook statuses: repostings of political and social items. What, we're all party operatives now? If we're "friends," traditionally there are two things that aren't supposed to come up: Politics and religion. How 'bout them apples?
Profile
songdogmi- Charlie Montney
- Charlie Monterey - singer, songwriter, guitarist
Comments
The interesting thing about Facebook is, I think it was the first place on the Web where the intent was to be yourself, your whole self -- not just a sliver of yourself devoted to a particular interest or persona. That makes it kind of weird if you've been online for a couple of decades. If you're supposed to be a normal human, instead of, say, an anthropomorphic fox or a dominatrix or a supergeek computer guy, the "rules" are all different. I think. This idea might bear closer inspection.
So from that perspective, at least, I'm not sure that Facebook does its users any favors!
It's bedtime for me here in
Connecticut,New England,USA.
Where can I hear your music online?
I still have some songs on MySpace but, y'know, it's MySpace. Also, I haven't caught up with the changes in MySpace, so I don't know if it's even accessible anymore.
Edited at 2013-10-28 02:11 am (UTC)
tried for over to connect
to the new my space . . .
not meant to be . . .
have you checked out lastfm?
like some of your songs very much
I'm thinking about completely dumping MySpace. I looked at it when they rolled out the latest new version, and saw I would lose everything and have to start from scratch if I converted my profile. So I never bothered. I feel like I should do SOMEthing with it, but ... meh.
I haven't done anything with lastfm yet. At least one of my friends has. I should check it out.
Edited at 2013-11-07 02:07 am (UTC)