I was never really into Facebook but lately I have been caught in the crosshairs of a Facebook battle.

Suddenly people from work are looking me up.

My nutty extended non mormon family has gone on profanity laced tirades about covid conspiracies and who loves or hates the president the most.

TBM friends and family are on a recruiting, testifying and sharing spree.

The last thing I want is these three groups trying to mix it up.

I'm tired of the noise. I'm tired of information I don't want, don't need and can't unthink. I'm tired of the constant invasion of privacy.

Facebook was a cool idea, but I'm out.

Oh, they said I could rejoin if I ever changed my mind. Does that sound familiar?

I took a long break from FB once. In my case, I was simply bored with it.

I think the secret of FB is in being really selective with your friends list. I have IRL friends whom I like very well indeed, but I can't stand what they post on social media. So they get unfollowed. I have people who are distant acquaintances at best, but who are the most entertaining FB posters, so I gladly keep them on my list. Networking for my job has been one of the more useful aspects of FB for me. So in short, I think you need to be ruthless in making it work for you.

Perhaps this is an inconvenient metaphor, but FB grows like a virus.

I started off with an immediate-family-only approach, but I also let in a few close friends. The next thing you know I had several hundred. I mean, where do the people come from?

Summer, you nailed it. It calls for ruthless control.

Perhaps I simply cannot be trusted to say no individualy. I did manage to say no to everyone at once.

You don't have to accept anyone who asks. You can and should turn down perfect strangers, who are likely trying to steal information about you. I turn down friends-of-friends (whom I've never met FTF) without even giving it a thought. If it's someone who might be hurt by me turning them down, then I let their request "sit" for a few months without response, until they forget they ever made it.

And as Greyfort pointed out below, establishing a new account under a pseudonym might not be a bad idea. That way *you* will be making most of the friend requests.

For anyone who posts in a tedious manner (i.e. religion, politics, etc.) just don't put them on your friends list at all. For one of my best friends from college, I just scroll right by her frequent political posts without a like or a comment. When people ignore her posts for long enough, she calms down about it.

I recently unfriended a former colleague who only posts regarding her MLM business. I will likely prune my friends list at some point in the future as well.

I agree. Perfect strangers get ignored.

It is my perfect friends and my perfect relatives that I find hard to ignore...

I’m really fed up with Facebook now. I mean, we are all at home what is there to share that is interesting? Nothing. I’m bored of memes, negative and dramatic stuff, politics. I’ve also stopped posting. My mental health is not great right now and I don’t trust myself to not post something I will later regret.

I'm sorry to hear that you have concerns now. I can imagine how emotional and mental well being can be affected by social media.

I have stopped watching as much national and local news for that reason. I would like to know what is going on in the world, but I feel like it always makes me feel worse.

Third of Five Wrote:
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> My mental health is not great
> right now...

Hi Third of Five. I recall that you are nursing in England - easy for me to remember because my mom and aunt were nurses in England and so is one of my cousins there. I nursed in Canada.

I can imagine, if you are still working, that with COVID-19 things are fraught for you (as with all health care workers at the moment). I'm sorry it's affecting you so adversely.

I wonder if there's any service in your hospital that gives support to the front line workers. You are asked to give and give and give, in often appalling and personally risky situations. Somehow, sometime, your own tank has to get refilled.

I'm glad you are posting here with us. Another country heard from, as one of my (cherished) English aunts often said. We kids weren't even sure what that meant but it made us laugh.

I hope you keep checking in with us. And I hope there's somebody nearby you can talk to if you feel the need.

Be safe, in all ways.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2020 03:50PM by Nightingale.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2020 08:55PM by Third of Five.

For me, FB is more positive than negative, but I had to learn how to handle it.

For one thing, I personally have never posted anything political or even controversial. If a FB “friend” insists on using the platform as their personal soapbox, I unfollow (rarely unfriend) them. I figure there are other places on the interwebz for that noise. An occasional political post doesn’t bother me.

I like seeing (and posting) humor. As an amateur musician, I like following the exploits of my musically inclined friends. I like keeping up with extended family and friends (with minimal effort on my part ;) ).

It's good to hear that you have fun with it.

I need to be less serious.

Nah--be as serious as you like.

Like I said, it works for me, but YMMV.

Don't worry about me..

Nobody ever does...

I need to get out of this funk that has only gotten worse in the last month.

I joined to make it easier to learn a bit about people before I have to deal with them in person.

I sent one message to a former roommate from Germany.

I've never sent a friend request, never accepted a friend request, never posted a picture, or posted a comment. Maybe I'll get into it some day.

Maybe this will cheer you up:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/Provisional-Death-Counts-COVID-19-Pneumonia-and-Influenza.pdf

One thing I do like is that because of the stay at home thing, I get to see musician friends and others perform their stuff from home either live, or on videos they post. For the most part, the people I've unfollowed were either posting nothing but political or religious stuff.

doyle18 Wrote:
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> I get to see musician friends and
> others perform their stuff from home either live,
> or on videos they post.

Indeed. Here's my favorite, from the beginning of lockdown in Spain: 30 famous Spanish artists, from very young to "living legends", covering an old disco track together. Two of them live together, the others don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl3B4Ql8RtQ

Social media is a supply-generator for narcissists. Boring.

Look at me drinking a Bud, when I drink a can of Bud it is very special. Believe me.

Nailed it.

I always thought Facebook looked like a giant time sink. I'm not thrilled with the company. I'm happy to say I never got on Facebook and have no plans to ever use it.

I have other places I'd rather browse on the web when I have time, like RfM. :-)

On a routine basis, I don't need to see what someone ate for dinner or the cute thing their cat did. The last thing I need is more contact from relatives or old Mormons from my past.

As much as I feel like I care for people, I don't really want to know much about the details of their lives.

I also find that the topics discussed in RFM are more relevant to me than the things I would read on FB.

The idea that people from work could look me up is precisely why I'm on Facebook under a pseudonym. When I was there under my own name, a bunch of cousins found me and kept flooding my page with memes, which annoy me to no end.

I tried just unfollowing them, but soon realized that they never posted any family news or events news that I would be interested in. It was all about the memes.

I use it to stay in touch with my family, my girlfriend and a very select group of friends. Not everyone in my friends list gets followed.

Lowpriest Wrote:
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> I was never really into Facebook

Me either. I like email.


> I'm tired of information I don't want, don't need and can't unthink.

"...can't unthink". I love it!


> I'm tired of the constant invasion of privacy.

I have only recently started using it again. I was never much into it so my page is pitiful and my contributor list miniscule. An old boyfriend looked me up though and we've been more in touch since the virus hit - both of us with less to do. I wasn't thrilled though when he included me on a chat with someone else I knew peripherally from school and now that guy wants to stay in touch. I have big trouble saying no to people but now there's an extra person in my sphere that I didn't really choose myself. Don't you love getting an email to say why haven't you answered my email?

It's nothing against (most of) the people. I just don't have a lot of time for peripheral things. Even without work due to COVID. That's crazy - 12 extra hours a day. You'd think I'd be all over FB. But, uh, not.

I just thought though, maybe I could look up my niece in Minnesota.

Ack. See how that goes?

Her page is full of all her school friends I really don't need to know about. Maybe that makes me a terrible aunt.

FB & CV: Maybe they were made for each other.

“Oh, they said I could rejoin if I ever changed my mind.”

The church is rich enough to pay you tithing. Ask them if the church wants you back that much.

I am presently in Facebook jail. I was given a thirty day sentence for a typographical error. That really sucks, because I use the social media to share my art and writing.

I've had to block hundreds of people on facebook, due to severe differences in perception. It would appear that thirty to forty percent of adult humans are dullards. I don't think I mind this half as much as the dullards do. They are in an uproar. Frankly, they remind me of Mormons, who I consider to be practicing dullards.

Your problem was a bad "l" key on your keyboard. Bad keys are not tolerated on Facebook. Now Russian propaganda and various deep fake videos, Mark's all in favor of those.

I hope this experience has helped you correct your moral values.*




*The rolling of the eyes

What was the typo? Facebook is my forum for saying mean things about a lot of sacred things, like presidents of the country and of the church, etc. I've only been dinged once, and it was FB telling me that I had posted something deemed to be not true.

He wrote ‘fag’accidentally instead of fang. Or something like that.

Wait. You're on FB Cludgie?

Send me a request

And who am I looking for?

There's not many siobhans that are violinists...

I just think Mark Suckerberg is a total douche.

He, and a couple of other big name guys are eerily semi-human seeming. The Steve Miller archetype, young Goering.

Yeah ... I'm not too thrilled Elon Musk either. He needs to be gone.

I'm starting to wonder about the urban myth that lizard people are assuming government positions. These creatures are not warm-blooded, whatever they are.

He even has the forked tongue....

About 15 years ago I first heard of Facebook.

My friend in the next classroom had Facebook on her computer. She was IMing someone else. I looked over her shoulder at her page. She had 591 friends. This was FIFTEEN years ago. I thought two things. 1–so that’s what this is about. A popularity contest. How very middle school, and 2-there is no way I can compete on that level and my self esteem doesn’t need that hit. So I never got a FB account. Or any other social media, for that matter aside from a YouTube acct.

I don't have any friends on my page. I only have Facebook in order to follow people that I subscribe to on YouTube, because sometimes they post things there that they don't post on YouTube.

I think facebook, like other technology such as having a smartphone, has replaced a lot of normal human interaction. But I think it also works in the other direction now too, in that people who are lacking proper connection in their lives will then tend to overshare on social media to compensate and don’t even realise they’re doing it. So it’s a viscous cycle. I find it useful to have connections in one place and feel I need it, but I’ve also realised I’m also doing that, because of the lack of normal family support. This pandemic has also made me realise just how few real friends I have.

It’s another reason I’m withdrawing from it right now. I’ll post anything and even if it’s minimally personal, I immediately feel too vulnerable when perhaps I might not in better times. Also when you’re going through a bad time, there is still an unbelievable amount of callousness there. The other day a ‘friend’ posted a political post about the public displays of support for healthcare workers hiding the real problems. I actually agree with it mostly, but it showed a complete lack of concern and understanding for what those people are going through and I really felt it. And it’s another example of how I will care for a person a great deal but it isn’t returned.

There is a lack of kindness in the world, and it really shows on social media, beyond the natural narcissism of a lot of it.

I’m not against Facebook but I do think if you’ve never had it then you’re better off from a mental health point of view. It’s like drinking from a chalice that contains a lace of poison. And whilst mormons might not all be bad people, they really are typical of all of that as well: truly believing they are good people but in the best of cases still lacking the genuine warm hearted kindness that the world actually needs, especially right now.

I really feel it, especially after having decided to help others in spite of knowing I’ll never get thanks for it, nor ever have government support to make it anything close to normal working conditions that those other people usually enjoy. People seem oblivious and when I’m feeling better I will eventually post on Facebook about it. Maybe. Or should I stay silent? It has, after everything else, been the one place where I can assert myself and no one can do a damn thing about it. So there’s that.

Student nurses were pulled out of placements nationwide at Easter. I am finding lockdown surprisingly a whole lot worse than working in hospital. It’s quite a depressing situation, and there feels like nothing to look forward to. In hard times you find out who your real friends are. And it’s put me off Facebook for the time being.

Third of Five Wrote:
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>
> There is a lack of kindness in the world, and it
> really shows on social media.


Yes. This has me really pulling back from social media a lot lately. I keep considering pulling out of Facebook, but I realize that I can always just read the posts of the people I follow without actually participating, if I want to.

I'm still thinking about it.

You make me think.

Am I withdrawing from a specific situation or am I withdrawing from people in general?

Thanks and good luck. I wish I could do more than offer platitudes, but this situation must improve. It has to improve.

I think looking for emotional support in your community resourced is the best idea I have read here so far.

I"m in deep with facebook, and loaded up my portfolio with fb. It's doing really well financially, the last few days it's surged, I"m just glad for the money. All the big techs are doing well during this pandemic.

I am glad to hear that your portfolio on FB is working out.

It's too easy for me to only concentrate on negative things. It is not all bad.

and I follow very few. I am on fb to see what my daughter is up to when she is off in Alaska. She has been working there for 12 years now and is gone all summer. I am able to message her also. I use fb for messenger more than for anything else as I hate texting. It is how I communicate with my boyfriend during the day and some of my family, my cousins, a friend or 2, etc. I post mostly things that are rather benign.

I have considered setting up my own Mastadon server. Other than RFM and looking in to Mastadon, I have not posted on any social media like facebook or Twitter. Mastadon is like Twitter but is not commercialized in any way. The software is open source and there is nothing to sell or be sold and no advertising there. You can either join someone else's instance (server), or set up your own Mastadon server. Some instances are general and some are topic oriented. The moderation is controlled by the server owner of each individual instance. But the servers are all what they call 'Federated', meaning that anyone on any server can both follow and/or be followed by anyone from any other server(s). Some instances are wide open to anyone who wants to join that instance. Other,instances can be very private and can require moderator approval to join. There is no advertising anywhere or celebrity bumps-up. There are only timelines without any algorithms to change the order of the tweets (called toots). You can publish a bio and pictures which are optional. There is a public timeline and also a private timeline.

If I start my own instance in Mastadon I'll probably just invite my closer friends and close family members to join my instance. They could then participate with me and also with the rest of the 'Fediverse' as they may want to. There are Android and iPhone apps for the client/users end. To set up the server requires paying around ten dollars per month for a virtual machine in the cloud, getting a domain name for ten dollars per year, and having some linux knowledge to set up the server (something I would enjoy setting up). They say that using Mastadon instead of twitter is a refreshing break, like moving from the big impersonal and competative city to a small town where everyone is kind and wants to be friends. By having the individual instance moderation and having many small instances with no actual company involved in the hosting, makes it easy to keep out the trolls and keep the purpose of your instance what you want it to be. But there are hundreds of thousands of users there. Any instance owner can ban individual users from either themselves or from their server if necessary. If other instances don't moderate well or have bad moderation policies, that whole instance can be banned. But generally, the culture in that environment seems to be quieter, nicer, and completely without any commercial interests anywhere.

I figured that if I just invite my closer real-life friends (not like having 500 facebook friends), the idea would be to stay in touch with just those I care to associate with from my real life, plus a few others who I might find by searching hashtag values in the public timeline about the things that interest me. It'll be more about quality than quantity.

However, it makes sense. At first I thought that FB would work that way. It could be a private area to communicate with actual family and friends.

Instead it is a marketing tool. It is an image manager. It is a way to keep tabs on each other. It is a place to rant. It is a place to expose our private thoughts that really should have remained private. Oh, it is also a multi billion dollar business. I guess they got it right.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2020 12:15PM by Lowpriest.

In any business, whether it's Facebook, TSCC, or anything else, it is a matter of taste and preference.

For myself, I'll never have a Facebook account because I text or talk with my family, and that's good enough for me.

The only social media that I've ever participated in is this forum.

Deleted my Facebook account 1.5 years ago. Completely forgot about it until this thread. Guess I just don't miss it.


TopperToppington

For the same reasons as the OP, I closed my FB account, a few years ago. Yes, FB's message told me that my name would remain on there for a year or so, before they would officially erase me. Much like the Mormon cult. I wonder if I'm still on there--probably--but I don't want to risk re-joining to find out.

The main objection I had was that I was too busy to keep up with it on a daily, or even weekly basis, and "friends" would get upset at me for not answering them in a timely manner. Hey, I will manage my OWN time, on my terms. I will not be insulted or made to feel bad, for no reason.

Also, I have problems to solve at work, all day long, and I don't need to be barraged by all the complaining on Fakebook. It was not entertaining (the problems were petty) or satisfying at all. I barely knew these people.

Most FB people had their own agenda, whatever it was, and I just didn't want to buy into all of that.

It's far more interesting to browse the websites of museums, zoos, aquariums, art galleries, cities, gardens, parks, etc. I just watched "Top small towns in the US." There are live cameras on some of my favorite beaches and resorts.

I had to stop watching the news, altogether. The broadcasters would flash those horrifying images onto the screen faster than I could turn them off. Even the commercials are disturbing, now.

I'm also realizing that I have very few friends, after being shunned for leaving Mormonism. I wave at the Mormon neighbors, and they wave back, but we never stop for a conversation.

I have been sick for two months, but able to work at home, with no energy for socializing. Today I was feeling guilty for not contacting some of my relatives and friends, to see how they are doing, or even where they are. Then I thought, "Not one of these people have contacted me--not one."

I don't reach out much, because I have no good news. I'm down. I'm anxious. I have no sense of humor right now. I'm in no position to help anyone, except my immediate family, right now.

My isolation goes farther than 10 feet.

I had the problem of people unfriending me. So I just went on a purge, got my number down to about 100 friends, 90 non-Mormon. Half of family blocked. I like to use it to keep in contact with some people from my Mission that are more open minded, and converts in Irelands that de-converted and we are good friends. Plus all of my high school buddies. Even when I go weeks without logging in, I like to know it is easy for me to contact these 100 people.