Who Needs Friends when you have Facebook?

Anti-Social Network

By Stephen B. Tippins Jr. | July 13, 2011

Facebook killed the counterculture, if you believe what Time tells you. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg—Facebook founder and 2010 Person of the Year—the final frontier of anonymity and equality, where anybody could be everybody or nobody, has given way to digital suburbia. “All that stuff that the Internet enabled you to leave behind, all the trappings of ordinary bourgeois existence—your job, your family, your background? On Facebook, you take it with you. It’s who you are.”

Lev Grossman’s cover story made a credible case for the everyday virtues of social networking: “Facebook makes cyberspace more like the real world: dull but civilized. The masked-ball period of the Internet is ending. Where people led double lives, real and virtual, now they lead single ones again”—as more than one congressman from New York has discovered to his regret.

But the world of Facebook and Twitter, and the BlackBerrys and iPhones that keep us connected, is not just a mirror of real life. It’s the proletariat in your pocket, the majority whose tyranny over taste is everywhere, even in your own face and profile.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/anti-social-network/

"“All that stuff that the Internet enabled you to leave behind, all the trappings of ordinary bourgeois existence—your job, your family, your background? On Facebook, you take it with you. It’s who you are.”"

Well if that's a problem for him, why doesn't he just NOT go on Facebook?
Facebook isn't 100% of the internet, there's tons of websites and forums where he can be just as anonymous as he wants to.

Harbortown wrote:

"“All that stuff that the Internet enabled you to leave behind, all the trappings of ordinary bourgeois existence—your job, your family, your background? On Facebook, you take it with you. It’s who you are.”"

Well if that's a problem for him, why doesn't he just NOT go on Facebook?
Facebook isn't 100% of the internet, there's tons of websites and forums where he can be just as anonymous as he wants to.

facebook is a global phenomenon. this guy is just reacting to it. i don't there's something wrong with voicing an opinion about something that has become such a big part of our culture.

Personally I don't use facebook. I realize that's incredibly odd for somebody my age. It's just a privacy thing. I don't need my life publicized or have a need to see other's lives, even my friends lives publicized. Just not my thing.

Does anybody else not use facebook or am I just anti-social lol?

There are times I've wished I never signed up for it. But then there are times (like finding out about a band's tour dates) where I'm glad I'm on it.

I know people that don't have accounts (they're 15 yrs apart in age). They're my heroes for resisting the whole thing.

Jay wrote:

Personally I don't use facebook. I realize that's incredibly odd for somebody my age. It's just a privacy thing. I don't need my life publicized or have a need to see other's lives, even my friends lives publicized. Just not my thing.

Does anybody else not use facebook or am I just anti-social lol?

I don't have a facebook account either. To me, the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits.

One drawback according to family law lawyers:

Facebook a top cause of relationship trouble, say US lawyers

Social networking site becoming primary source of evidence in divorce proceedings and custody battles, lawyers say


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/08/facebook-us-divorces

I don't have a Facebook account

I'm a facebook-addict. Not proud of it, not ashamed of it either.
I use it for different purposes. When it comes to work all of the colleagues exchange shifts with each other.
I have a lot of people living abroad with whom it's too expensive to call everytime, and yes, there's texting, skyping, e-mailing etc. but since everyone is on FB it's just as easy.

It's easy to update people and it leads to fantastic discussions which sometimes you wouldn't have started if you hadn't read a status or opinion ventilated over the internet.

I have no secrets and it's fantastic killing time during college by just scrolling through for example vacation photos. If people wouldn't want others to see them, they wouldn't post them.

It's also cool to catch up with people from your hometown, whom otherwise you might never have spoken to again.

True, it can be used in a negative way aswell, but I simply haven't experienced it.

To be honest, deleting a few key people has made the Facebook experience much more pleasant.