The way I look at it is this: life is complex and people are busier than they used to be in previous eras. Many of us don’t get to socialize as much as we’d like. And it’s amazing how fast you can lose touch with people nowadays when everyone is so very mobile–they can move to another state or even to another continent. It’s maddening. So, maybe because of times like these, social networking sites are so popular. Because we need them now.

This is, of course, my own opinion. I could be wrong. Maybe keeping in touch with people really will cause our civilization to collapse?

The popularity of Facebook is a sad commentary on what has become of our society. Are we really that superficial and judgemental?

No, but you seem judgmental. Your distaste for Facebook doesn’t prove that it is contributing to the fall of civilization.

“don’t worry I’ll facebook you”

its crazy, like when people use predictive text, and when people said things were “BOOK” instead of cool.

Of course nothing beats meeting people in the flesh, actually using all the senses you have, and holding what can be called a conversation. Communicating.

Get one of you blogger’s based in London so we can have more London meetups. I know it is a north American Blog but we can look past that.

Biggups and respect to Vinod for the first one. J

She’s like “What are you? A freak? I should have married that Guju doctor from Chicago”

Poor bride, apparently wanted to marry a doctor, and married a quack instead! /I keed, I keed!

That was good. Made me quack a smile.

That having been said, a friend not too long ago called me and said “hey, why haven’t you replied to me on Facebook?” Naturally, I was surprised since I have no account, but later on found out that indeed I DID have an account, albeit one I had not created. After doing a little snooping about, I found out that a 3rd party had in fact made the page for me because this person “felt I should have one anyone/ it’s in my best interests”. I wrote a polite, yet firm, email to facebook and now am no longer listed on the site. To this day, I have no idea about exactly what was on my “page” since not having created it I had no password to even log in and access it.

My main concern with these sites is and always has been exactly that this sort of thing is possible. If you want to post pictures of yourself piss-drunk or running around pants-less, that’s fine with me, but I have a career in which my public image is critical (teacher), and some of my students actually tried to “friend” me on facebook. I shudder to think of the potential damage that could have been done to my reputation if this 3rd party had decided “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to make up stories about how he likes_________”. As previous posters have said, in this day and age what you post to the internet stays forever.

Fortunately this person was not malicious, but had they been it could have REALLY hurt me before I even found out about it and then had to convince everyone it “wasn’t me, but a third party who was pretending to be me in order to ruin my rep!” like that ever works.

Bottom line: be wary, and even if you DON’T have a facebook page, have friends search your name and make sure someone hasn’t decided to make one for you.

Privacy / Applications and Ads setting —> this needs to be all set to lowest possible, if not anything you post is now public and facebook is not legally liable…you ask those kids who got fired from law firms about the pot photos their idiot HS friends posted 5 year later…

Also BTW, if you don’t change those settings, Facebook will sell your info!!!