WHY I WON'T DO FACEBOOK (ADULT LANGUAGE) SouthPark video

[beemaster]

I've seen friends DESTROYED by their addiction to Internet Communities, Gaming, and other Social Networking Sites and I had mentioned that the Beemaster Facebook Site is NOT MINE in any way, but a FAN SITE made to give members a way to interact. I only add the last line because for those who don't know it, they may think it is a site made by me, it is not.

Here is the ULTIMATE  EXAMPLE of the silliness of Facebook and other "Friend" based communities where your only goal is to make the most friends (with people you have/ nor will ever meet) to increase advertisement rates for companies that use real people to suck them into fantasy.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/267112/?xrs=

NOT, you hear the adult language that is normally bleeped from South park. And I don't care if you like Southpark or not, I hope you will watch this video, it explains quite well how I feel about the addiction and traps created to suck people in and often change their lives for the worse.

Games like world of Warcraft have addition councilors as SHOULD many other role playing games. People are getting lost into imaginary places, spending their savings all for the right to call themselves ONE OF THE GREATS of their games/addiction of choice.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/267112/?xrs=

PLEASE WATCH - about 23 minutes and it says it better than I ever could.

[JP]

John, this video was scary & accurate!

My wife joined facebook. The e-mails that come in, so & so has added you as a friend, please respond if you want to add them as a friend...

I have my forums & that's enough to keep up with. If someone wants to be my friend, they can pick up the phone or come visit me.

Got to draw the line somewhere.

I'm with you on this one.


...JP

[G3farms]

I am on facebook but just to the point of keeping in contact with some of my relatives one of which is in the army stationed in irac. other than that not much activity. there is one girl that i went to high school with lives on there, every time i open it up the whole front page is nothing but her. as far as farmville goes no way, i have that to do in real life.

G3

[beemaster]

Thanks for the agreement on this, yep it scares me and just to think that many businesses are hitting facebook first when search prospective employees (same with most the social networking sites) it keeps personnel departments busy and surely so many people are expressing way too much about themselves and as JP mentioned, the friends of friends of friends thing can blemish you badly.

Keeping track of it all is the hard part, before you know it, you have a freakshow of a friend list.

G3, you are doing it right, keep it to family and close friends and you will be okay, beyond that it gets way too complicated. I like Skype and Ventrilo for having a way to communicate directly. Ventrilo works so much like an intercom, everyone is just a click away and you easily talk worldwide without delays, the big thing negative is you take turns talking.

Skype has many advantages especially if you have good internet speeds, audio quality is superior to ventrilos default settings - both lone and multi-member chatting like a phone is great, you all can talk the same time and leave messages in text format when contacts are away.

I'd rather do forums, pming and voice chatting that any social network - and farming... I live in the garden state, we don't have farms here any more - ugh.

[podius]

Southpark got it right on this one. I use facebook just to keep up with close/old friends, I have a phone for family BUT you guys that stay away from it may be missing a good marketing tool. My wife has a photography business and she has a fanpage. People see her work, then tell friends, ect and they want to have their picture taken. She doesn't share her personal site with just anyone-hence the fanpage. Word of mouth is the best marketing tool and FB does a great job of that. Put your honey business on a fanpage, post youtube videos, ect. People that you sell too will promote your honey and tell friends and pretty soon your honey will sell itself (so long as it's not black and taste like molasses-aka store honey).

[deknow]

...we too are "faceless", and happy to be so.  even in our musical lives, we've avoided myspace/facebook (other band members take care of that stuff, i want nothing to do with it).  we love southpark, and will view this when we are not on limited bandwidth.

when we attend our local small business association, everyone is despriate for customers, and facebook is always cited (along with tricks to get good google rankings).  when i mention that COMPELLING CONTENT is what you need for your website, I'm told that these are concepts too advanced for discussion 

deknow

[kathyp]

all things in moderation. 

if someone chooses to destroy their life in front of the computer, TV, or whatever, so be it.  do not call it a disease and do not make me pay for the "cure". 

'we are the sum total of the choices we make'

[VolunteerK9]

My wife and I have had several discussions about Facebook. I tried it briefly, but frankly I really don't want anyone knowing that much about me nor do I want to know every detail about someone elses life.  It amazed me to see that some people had 400+ people on their 'friends' list. I can count my true friends on one hand with my dad being Number#1 on my list. I do have several people that I know and interact with, but to put 400 people under a blanket 'friends' list is a little much. She's on it, and it part of her daily ritual to look people up, look at pics, basically just being nosy. To each, their own but I don't see any entertainment/educational value in it at all. I was looking through hers one day and saw some girl had posted that taking the meds she was prescribed was making her constipated. Now why in God's name would anybody want to advertise to the entire world that her pipes were clogged? Geez I deleted my account and won't take part in it again.