IGX

For me, it went from Dragon Door to IG (and a little P&B and even less IOL) to FSF to IGx to Facebook.

I've met many, many, good people by way of forums and FB. Some only 'online', I've known for years and never talked to whom I would consider friends, or at the very least, I hold respect for. Others, I've only talked to via phone and/or IM. And a couple of dozen I've met in RL by way of forums. Not a single one I've regretted speaking with or meeting....quite the opposite.

Due to social media, I've learned to think differently about certain things and have learned that I haven't done too damned bad for myself given the cards played to me.

I've also been fortunate enough to land my present job and the one prior to that by staying in touch with professional contacts via Facebook.

Last but not least, I've reconnected with friends from childhood, USMC, and the NYPD which would have not otherwise happened. For a guy like me whose done a lot of different things and lived in a lot of different places vs. staying in the area I grew-up, it's been great.

So, I am a fan of social media and it's been good to me.

But I see it all as a bit exhausting and most definitely noisy, and doubt I'm the only one. Are so many of the things we bitch about today or laud as 'land mark' events or some such shit anything we'd even bat an eye at 20+ years ago? If Jenner did his he/she thing in 1990, he's grab a headline for a day or so. If a dentist killed a lion that same year....Page Six, *maybe*. Are we all more 'socially aware' now or have we just been conditioned to get spun-up about every little thing?

Whaddya think? Are we going to stay in this hyperconnected state or will people begin to disconnect from social media and let the chips fall where they may? Or, is there something else on the horizon? (a 'what's old is what's new again' would get my bet). FWIW, the few folks I know who stepped away from FB, ect tend to be the ones who never left their hometowns....NTTAWWT.

I agree with everything you say, especially this. I think about shutting down my FB about every other day, but for some reason never do it. I'm not on it near as much as I used to be. Yes, I check in several times a day, but it's usually to scroll through quickly then I see some people moaning, bitching, criticizing, etc. about something and I jump off. I just don't feel I need that much negativity in my life. I've got enough shit going on as it is. That's one reason I don't watch the news.

I don't know where it's going, Nappy, but I do see myself spending less time on it. I spend most of my social media time on Instagram anyway. People post cool pictures and I would much rather look at something like that.

The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:But I see it all as a bit exhausting and most definitely noisy, and doubt I'm the only one. Are so many of the things we bitch about today or laud as 'land mark' events or some such shit anything we'd even bat an eye at 20+ years ago? If Jenner did his he/she thing in 1990, he's grab a headline for a day or so. If a dentist killed a lion that same year....Page Six, *maybe*. Are we all more 'socially aware' now or have we just been conditioned to get spun-up about every little thing?

You need to prune back your friends list, but even then there is no guarantee you won't see stupid shit

Plus I love the fucking drama 'shutting down my facebook'. Fuck, son, just don't go there of its bugging you

what is facebook?

In the early days of FB, you could actually friend anyone. Someone who was on the cutting edge and lived locally, said to, "just use my friends list". I later found a local fitness, now natural food guy, [Dale's Food Bars for Shaf], doing that to my friends list. He'd just build his network for hours.

So I went from 4000 to about 600. Cut out the excess. Then it slowly built.

Both Robin and I work from home. She has close to 5000 friends and 6000+ followers. However she gets commissions from all over the US and other countries, so it's free advertising.

I have clients from Dragondoor, here, my website and Facebook.

You can't be all about the business. Goofing around with Florida news and hot chicks is "keeping it playful".

I've connected with friends from my youth, class reunions and distant cousins.

It's energy that could be put elsewhere but like when people retire and plan all kinds of stuff, they usually still don't have time to do it.

That's what I said I was doing now.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Plus I love the fucking drama 'shutting down my facebook'. Fuck, son, just don't go there of its bugging you

One thing I like is that there are "secret" groups where you can have more serious discussions about training,history or whatever is your cup of tea without people being to unserious.There are days when I don`t check in on fb.Bugs me more when Igx is down to tell you the truth.

After I was finished tracking down and checking out all of my old girlfriends, I got rid of my account.

Never signed up. Haven't regretted.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote: there is no guarantee you won't see stupid shit

No desire to close up my FB world nor do I want to prune my friends list. I just think the ninny-factor has intensified a great deal in this world in a short time and Facebook has a lot to do with it. People are going to want to stay connected now, I just think there might be a cleaner, simpler way on the horizon that is not tweeting and with lower signal to noise ratios.

My FB posts feed Twitter. GoDaddy was down this morning. I posted if it was down for others. GoDaddy Tweeted me within 90 seconds. That's pretty cool.
Posting and event where you click a map to find the location, etc.. Smartphones make things easy.

I just hide anyone saying they've watched the cf games.

Or think that paleo is evolutionary science.

Or that planned parenthood sells chopped up baby parts.

Well, I guess that's most of my feed.

I keep an eye on the bullshit mongers, the plagiarizers, and the client poachers.

I'm thinking of dropping Facebook for MySpace

I think there is something about being able to express your opinion to hundreds and thousands of people that makes you think you have an opinion worth expressing. It isn't.

The man in black wrote:I think there is something about being able to express your opinion to hundreds and thousands of people that makes you think you have an opinion worth expressing. It isn't.

That's your opinion

The man in black wrote:I think there is something about being able to express your opinion to hundreds and thousands of people that makes you think you have an opinion worth expressing. It isn't.

This.

99.999999999% of the social media stuff is boring and irrelevant (except for fapping purposes). You could trim the vast majority of this board's messages (including my own) and the interesting useful information would still be the same.

I'm not a special snowflake, neither are any of you. There are some exceptions, of course: Dan John, Jack Reape, Shaf Bear, BD, Tom Furman and a few others. The rest of us are... gray motherfuckers at best.

SubClaw wrote:There are some exceptions, of course: Dan John, Jack Reape, Shaf Bear, BD, Tom Furman

All idiots.

I resemble that remark.

The noisier people I just turn off their feeds and that cuts WAY back on the annoyance. I would prune whose opinions I'm automatically exposed to first.

Facebook is pretty interesting, I find it's easy to control the shit that bugs me and my own friends list is diversified enough that I usually get to hear at least 3 of the most extreme angles on a particular issue and I like that. I for one love watching Darth interact with my Scandinavian socialist friends.

Twitter..OTOH, is really tough. I have gotten nearly nothing of value out of it, it feels mostly like the new advertising. Perhaps it will evolve a little and or I will.

I liked forums better than Facebook because they had better info and you could go deep into a topic. If it's something you were interested in improving, a good forum was better than pretty much any book or teacher. When I found my first barefoot, vegan, Buddhist bronie group I thought the internet had been perfected. Secret Groups in Facebook have the potential to do the same but it's rare to see the equivalent of an 800 page thread.

Facebook used to irritate me but is essential in that a lot of event invitations come through it. I use messenger more than Line, WeChat, QQ, Skype or whatever the kids are using this week.

I find that I use it more and more as a search engine - you can find an article and the person who posted it, perhaps including a discussion related to it. As teh Google keeps screwing things up, I predict Facebook will be used more and more for this kind of thing.

I like seeing opposing viewpoints and sometimes read through posts from people who I entirely disagree with simply to try to see what they see in the world.

However, I don't understand a lot of behavior that I see, especially from Americans. I don't understand oversharing though appreciate it when hot women do it. I don't understand why everybody seems so angry about everything all the time. I don't understand why this anger only appears to last 24-48 hours before the next offending incident takes place. I don't understand why people think I want to see what they had for breakfast, I don't understand people saying 'happy birthday' to their pets. I don't understand how people think they will change others religious or political views from a meme. I don't understand why people want to fight about...what they eat? I don't understand why somebody would say BD or Shaf were special snowflakes? What. The. Hell?

Love the last paragraph Proto(the real one). Except the food porn pics. I like homemade food porn pics.

Yeah, that was good.

The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:Love the last paragraph Proto(the real one).

Protobuilder wrote:However, I don't understand a lot of behavior that I see, especially from Americans. I don't understand oversharing though appreciate it when hot women do it. I don't understand why everybody seems so angry about everything all the time. I don't understand why this anger only appears to last 24-48 hours before the next offending incident takes place. I don't understand why people think I want to see what they had for breakfast, I don't understand people saying 'happy birthday' to their pets. I don't understand how people think they will change others religious or political views from a meme. I don't understand why people want to fight about...what they eat? I don't understand why somebody would say BD or Shaf were special snowflakes? What. The. Hell?

jerk