Facebook

I've been wanting to write a post about Facebook for several weeks now, and finally have decided, I just need to do it.  I am a relatively new facebooker, having been doing it now for only 2 or 3 years, as opposed to my kids, who have been facebooking almost all their adult lives. 

My husband had a Facebook less than a month before he in frustration, deleted it forever.  He said he could not deal with first of all, people wanting to be his FB friend, when in real life, they hadn't spoken to him in years, and if for some reason, they would have spoken to him, it would be a short conversation and once you catch up, that's it.  Secondly, he had no defense against the "minutia" of information people posted, and found it  hard to understand why they thought he would be interested in knowing that they took their dog to the vet, went to the store, trimmed their toenails, or killed a spider in their house.  He was assaulted with posts from games people were playing and although he blocked them, found it was an ongoing battle he just didn't want to fight.  Thirdly, he rarely statused because, well, he's just sort of a private person.  He doesn't feel the need to tell people he found a good deal on toilet paper or had a flat tire, or threw up his lunch, or whatever.

In so many ways, Facebook has had a gigantic impact on our personal lives, and in our culture.  We post our political and religious opinions, we share articles and videos we find interesting, we comment on others' posts, and we basically, open our lives to those we choose to be friends with, whether they are truly "friends" or not.  My social world has expanded - I am familiar with friends other people are friends with just because of the comments they make on mutual friends' walls.  From today's posts, I know that:  Robert likes "Facing the Giants" movie, that Charles has friended two people I don't know, that my son Dan wants tacos for lunch, that my niece is seeing a 1:00 show, that a school friend is garage saling today and another friend is scrapbooking.  That's just from this morning and I only have a moderate amount of friends.  Our family uses Facebook to send messages and invitations, and, we have a reunion facebook page set up where information is posted that is beneficial to all who are coming.  Overall, I don't object to that, and in fact, I have invited those statuses to be a part of my life because I have ageed to have a Facebook account. 

What's not to like?  Well, here's something that knocks me for a loop from time to time:  A status or opinion which is posted, and which quickly turns into a spirited discussion, which quickly turns into people misunderstanding what someone has posted, which quickly turns into people arguing with each other, and from there, we have people verbally assaulting one another.  I've participated in many civil discussions on facebook, and some not so civil.  Participants are much more likely to respond quickly by typing and in doing so, will write things they might not normally say face to face.  I think people are much more careful about what they say and how they say it when they are actually looking at another human being in the room, however, this is changing rapidly.  People are now living Facebook real lives, and I'll explain more in the next post.  

In the meantime, I solict your opinons - how do you feel Facebook has benefited our lives in a postive way, and how has it negatively impacted you, or society as a whole?