This is a plea for tolerance. This is a request for a return to civility. This is just me, tired of a certain kind of post on facebook. The irony is, what I wish people would stop posting, is requests for people to stop posting certain types of things on facebook. My hypocritical rant begins now.
There are a lot of different ways people use facebook. Some people use it to stalk people and try and hook up, which was its original intended purpose. Other people use it like twitter, to update people about what is going on in their lives. Some folks are just there to play games and waste time. A lot of people I know use it to share pictures of their kids with friends and relatives. Of course it can also be used as a business tool, to get the word out about your business or to attract potential clients/customers. These are all legitimate uses of facebook, but it seems that many people feel that facebook should only be used the way they use it, and get annoyed when others use it differently.
Perhaps I am one of the few people who understands a variety of facebook uses because I have been a variety of facebook users myself. I started out using it just for fun, “collecting” my friends, just like I did with MySpace and Friendster before it. After one of their more annoying site updates however, I basically left facebook and didn’t sign in for months. Then I went to grad school, got bored between classes, and started playing all the games. I was playing Pirate games, Mob games, Ninja games, Viking games, Game Show games, you name it. And my wall was filled with requests to help me defeat sea monsters or join my mob. But then I realized that these games were eating up all of my free time and I had no life, so I stopped playing them.
Then I had kids, and my Mom (among others) wanted constant pictorial updates of my life, so I created a facebook account for her and started putting up pictures of the baby. This was my primary use of facebook for a few years. After Ruby learned to talk, she inevitably started saying hilarious things, a few of which I posted on facebook, and they got such a big response, I started posting the “Ruby Quote of the Day” fairly regularly, and continued putting up pictures whenever I had any.
Along the way, I also started amassing a large number of colleagues in the music business as facebook friends. It quickly became clear to me how helpful having a list of pianists, or conductors, or baritones could be in one handy place, with contact information to boot. Us self-employed singers use facebook like crazy, to promote recitals, shows, and concerts, and to keep a roster of talented individuals that we may need to use and abuse someday. So I get that too.
These days I primarily use facebook to post my blog, put up Ruby quotes once in a while, and maybe play a game or two while the kids are napping, but I have been through it all. It’s actually kind of fun for me to see what phase of life my friends are in. When I see someone posting 4000 Farmville requests, well, I know what they are up to. And when I see album after album of drunken party pictures, I think, wow, you really should not be posting that stuff on facebook, but I get it. I love seeing pictures of my friends’ kids, and I love hearing about my friends jobs, gigs, recitals, and everything else they are up to. My only true annoyance is with people who post live about TV shows that I am DVRing, because I get spoiled a lot (especially Glee, why does everyone post a play-by-play of Glee every week?), but again, I get it! They are excited about their favorite shows. I’m glad they are excited. I even make it through my crazy right-wing friends political rants, and I think, “Wow, I will never discuss politics with you over dinner, I’m glad you posted that!”
The thing is, facebook is just an extended social network. If you had a class reunion, some people would only talk about their kids, some people would make inflammatory political statements, some people would hand out business cards, and some people would be dancing naked on the tables. You wouldn’t tell these people to shut up because you don’t care about them in person would you? At least I hope you wouldn’t! And you shouldn’t do it online either. And if you really hate everything a person posts, there is always the option to block them, just don’t ask them to stop sharing what they care about.
thumbs up! I totally agree.