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This comment posted on my Facebook wall has had me thinking over the past few weeks, “Why do I have a Facebook?”. I went here because it was originally much nicer than Myspace, which I happened to go on a lot. But now, I rarely go on Facebook for more than 10 minutes, and never really do anything. Trying to think of why this is so, the answers are fairly obvious.

I’m a member of other services which do it better.

Besides the fact that conversations are threaded, the News Feed is almost exactly like Twitter. I can see peoples posts, a time stamp, etc. I can reply to them, or make my own new post. The things people say are fairly similar too; usually nothing overly profound. Twitter has all this, plus conversations just seem so much more sociable, and I end up talking to people a lot on there instead.
I prefer sites like Picasa and Flickr for photos too. While it’s awesome that I can share a photo of last night with the friends involved, I feel better using a platform specifically built for the endeavour. The same goes for video, with videos being widely better. So what does Facebook have that’s unique?

James just joined the group I FUCKING HATE GROUPS WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT MAKE IT STOP. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

One of my most major gripes with this website is how many stupid groups and pages there are, and how people always seem to be joining them. They can be lumped into multiple smaller groups:

• Mundane – “Looking in the fridge and the cupboard repeatedly thinking food will appear” and “I HATE IT WHEN CRUMBS FALL IN MY BRA!” are two examples of this. These are stupid groups and pages based on stupid everyday things no one cares about, but now it’s on Facebook it’s suddenly awesome. I see people spending ages just joining and liking as many of these things as humanly possible. Guys, while I know it’s devastating to realize you’re chewing on a pen you borrowed from someone else, there’s no reason to make a Facebook group out of it.
• Spellcheck just exploded – Now I can understand if people want to join a really dumb group. I mean, it’s your prerogative if you want to join “I’M 15, PREGNANT, AND PROUD OF IT!”. However, if that group is named “IM 15, PRGNT, N PRUD OV TI~!!!” I will stab you. No really. I will fucking murder you. If you’re going to join a group or a page, at least make sure the person put enough effort into it to actually spell the title correctly. And if you’re the one who created the page, may god have mercy on your mentally disabled soul.
• If ______ people join this group, then _____ will ______. – You know these groups. Theyre the ones who refer to someone you have NEVER heard of, doing something you will NEVER see or hear about, provided a certain amount of people join the group.
  Just like you guys, I have never met, nor even heard of Nick Abbott, yet if I join this group, apparently he will be 0.0001% closer to dying his hair. Exciting right? No. I am sick of these groups existing, and the amount of people who actually join them.
• Everything else – Lets be honest, some groups are okay, but 99% of them are retarded, as are the people who join them.

Of course I’d be a hypocrite if I said I disliked the idea of all pages and groups on Facebook. I joined a couple of good official ones, and those who’s updates genuinely interest me.

The various things you get requests for.

I can cope with the idea of an inbox. They’re a given in social networks, and the idea of private messaging is one that I for one enjoy. However, there is also another sort of inbox, and it’s one that contains all the various requests you receive including friend invites, and page invites. I like having them all in one place, but the problem lies in that there are so many applications that send so many “requests”. If you leave it just a little bit too long without clearing it out, you can get inundated with hundreds of useless requests to join groups like “IF I GOT ALL THE CASH IVE SPENT ON ALCOHOL BACK I WOULD BE ONE RICH FUCKER!” and the various “gifts” I apparently receive in games I have never played. Basically, while the concept is good, no one wants the equivalent to spam.

Apparently my friends.

You know those people you never really spoke to if at all in your life, that you know you’ll never see again in person? The ones who sat in your home group in high school, or worked indirectly with you and you maybe said hello to once a week? I don’t know why but the moment I got Facebook suddenly these people considered me a friend and added me.
I’m considering deleting all the people I’m not in contact with, because I don’t really feel like having a lot of them seeing what I do if I do anything. Fact is, a lot of these people I didn’t talk to or weren’t friends with for a reason, and the fact that they want to add me is kind of weird.

Privacy

This is a big one, and not really something that stops me using Facebook, but it does make me a bit hesitant on the whole thing. It’s no secret that Facebook is questionable when it comes to what happens with your information, who can use it, who can see it, and so forth. Editing your privacy settings is a time consuming ordeal, and I’ve learnt a few things while doing it, such as the fact that certain applications seem to have permission to use my email address as they see fit¹. I see a few of my friends deleting all the information on their Facebook over all the privacy issues, because not only is it hard to make your stuff private, it’s almost impossible to delete your Facebook profile. Which is the most retarded thing Facebook could ever do.

There are possible a few other reasons why I don’t use Facebook much if at all but seriously, these are reason enough for me to want to invest more time on blogs or Twitter, or maybe do that crazy old fashioned thing and actually call or text someone. Insane, right?

1. not sure if this is actually true, no one seems to know. However “Give my email address” is different to “Email” in permissions, and that scares me.

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