Facebook-delisting, changing status

[shootingstar]

I don't use Facebook yet. I'm just curious...if you have had any negative experiences with people via Facebook? Delisted anyone?

And do you twitter? Frankly I can't get excited about twittering and other short (not useful) messages about observations.

But then I still don't have a cellphone.

By the way, don't get me wrong as technologically phobic. For career/work related stuff, Internet and computers as tools are just great. I now would not accept a job in my profession as librarian or records manager that would not allow me to manage and deliver resources and services effectively via computers and Internet.

Just in my personal life/time, things are different. I'm happy with email, Internet chat forums, etc. The basics...

Facebook vultures souring the social experience
Rising number of people are feeling used, bruised on social networks as transgressions become part of the norm online

By Susan Schwartz, Montreal Gazette
March 31, 2009

Social networking like Facebook makes it easier than ever to behave like a boor. The number of people feeling used and bruised is rising as social transgressions become part of the norm online.
Montreal publicist Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins thought a former colleague had good intentions when he befriended him on Facebook.
It wasn't long before the acquaintance contacted him to ask if they could do drinks — and suggested some of Desjardins's friends join them.

"He had never approached me before seeing me out with a group of friends, one of whom is a local celebrity," recalled Desjardins, who has been on the social network for about two years and has about 150 Facebook friends — half a dozen of whom he calls close friends. Desjardins made nothing of it at the time, thought merely that it might be nice to add a new friend to the mix.
So the one-time colleague came along for drinks. And once he'd cozied up to the local celebrity, Desjardins never heard from him again.

He realized then that he had been taken advantage of by a new breed of cad: the Facebook vulture — someone brazen and calculating, a person who has no problem using "friends," then tossing them aside.
"My biggest regret is not having seen it for what it was," said Desjardins, 35. "I would advise anyone to be wary of Facebook and not accept all friend requests.

"The site — members are aptly called users — can provide opportunists with a unique entry point to pillage your life and vulture your friends . . . and the whole incident made me uncomfortable about Facebook as a social milieu."

Predatory and rude social behaviour, of course, is all around us. But Facebook offers a cloak of anonymity, which emboldens people to act in ways they never would in real life, observed Leslie Regan Shade, an associate professor in Concordia University's department of communications studies. It makes it possible "to dispense with the social niceties," as Desjardins put it.
One hardly needs a social network to engage in rude behaviour, pointed out Nora Young, host of Spark, a CBC Radio program on technology and culture. She did muse out loud, though, that if the one-time colleague — despite his uncouth behaviour, Desjardins doesn't wish to embarrass him by naming him — didn't think what he was doing was so bad, why didn't he just ask Desjardins, in person, to make the introduction?

"To friend someone on Facebook when you don't really have any intention of having any type of relationship . . . that would seem to be inappropriate — and probably unethical," said the writer and broadcaster.
The one-time colleague and the celebrity became fast Facebook friends after that evening, then real friends, who would hang out together and write back and forth on each other's Facebook walls, making plans. Which Desjardins, of course, would see in his news stream.
The metaphorical slap in the face was too much: He removed both their streams, then eventually cut the one-time colleague from his friend list.

That's another thing about Facebook: The sting of that slap greets you every time you log in — through features like wall posts, photographs of parties hosted by people who were at yours but didn't invite you to theirs or, if you use it, the relationship status. Your "friends" know, too.

When Chelsy Davy announced the end of her five-year relationship with Prince Harry in January by changing her relationship status on Facebook to "not in one," way more people than Harry knew he'd been dumped. Ouch.
"I definitely notice — and my friends and I will discuss — if a 'major' couple is suddenly single," 23-year-old Rachel Eichenbaum said. The recent Northwestern University graduate and Chicago resident said friends at school who broke up with their boyfriends "viewed changing their Facebook relationship status as a serious source of anxiety . . . because it was a major way in college for 'the scene' to find out about a breakup."

When Montreal translator Karine Majeau attended a party with a guy she was dating, one of the female guests, clearly attracted to him, asked Majeau how long she and her companion been dating. "A few months," she replied.
Oh, said the woman. "On his Facebook page, his status is 'single.'"
Majeau's relationship ended before too long — for other reasons. "But it was a sign," she said.

Although Majeau, 34, lives a low-tech life, without a cellphone or cable service, she had a Facebook page briefly so a friend living in France could send her photographs. But an unwelcome "poke" from an ex who had tracked her down destabilized her sufficiently that she deleted the page in short order.

With little regret. For her, Facebook was filled with posts superficial to the point of banal and friend requests mainly from "people from my past who I don't want to see or who leave me indifferent." She accepted them, as many do, because it seemed the path of least resistance.

Which is not to say there aren't plenty of true friends and loving family members on Facebook, people who care about each other and who love the idea of being able to share everything from pictures and personal updates to their take on world affairs.
For 175 million people and counting, using Facebook is a way to talk about what's on their mind and to provide links to articles or videos, to network professionally and connect with new people — and to keep in touch with those they don't see much.
Facebook could surpass Google in terms of worldwide unique visitors within three years, according to a report from RBC Capital Markets in Toronto, and there are those who believe social-networking sites are poised to overtake e-mail as favoured modes of communication.

Facebook's fastest-growing demographic is the 30-and-up set: work and, in many cases, family responsibilities have encroached, and it becomes tougher to sustain friendships that were once so vital.
For Hal Niedzviecki, a Toronto-based writer and culture critic, Facebook, then, is one strategy to avoid the loneliness that plagues so many. Also, it harnesses the power of celebrity: How enticing is it to have lots of people checking out your Facebook page, or following you on Twitter?

Both these things — the loneliness inherent in our post-industrial digital society and the power of celebrity — enhance people's desires to participate in social networks, where more is always better, said Niedzviecki, author of a forthcoming book on the subject.
But Facebook can also exploit a false and entirely trivial notion of what it means to be a friend, Concordia's Regan Shade observed and Niedzviecki, 38, found out when he threw a party for 700 of his Facebook friends — and only one turned up.
As part of the research for his book, due out in May, he invited people he knew only through Facebook to a party at a local club: they included friends of friends, people expanding their own roster of friends and people who had befriended him because he is, to a degree, a public figure, a bit of a man about town.

The turnout was "kind of a personal blow to my ego," he said. But he learned an important lesson: people hadn't taken his invitation seriously.
The ones who said "yes" on Facebook meant "maybe" and those who said "maybe" meant "probably not," they told him when he followed up.
For them, there is "a disconnect between cyber-friendship and real-life friendship."
To Niedzviecki, that says something about the limits of the Facebook community. For all the lofty proclamations by believers in the power of the social network to change the world, he says: "Guess what? That is going to be awfully hard to do if people don't take the connection seriously."
It's germane to an idea he advances in the new book, The Peep Diaries: How We Are Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbours: People use social networks as entertainment and as a pastime. "They're watching other people go about their lives on Facebook," he said.

Indeed, many of us would be mortified to admit how much time we spend on the pursuit, checking profiles of people we barely know or don't at all and following their posts, calling them friends.

There are, of course, myriad reasons one might befriend someone on Facebook, said Spark's Young.

Your "friends" may include people you truly want to form some kind of social network with or they may already be friends; they may be people you know from years ago or people you have never met at all but have connected with to network professionally. In that way, a Facebook relationship can be "a nebulous not-quite-friendship."

Since we're using Facebook in so many ways, with people continuously joining the network, "the lines of what people ought to be doing in that space are quite vague," she said. And so people can act in ways that seem rude or unethical without intending to.
Chances are you'd be taken aback if someone you didn't know invited himself along to hang out with you and your friends, Niedzviecki said. "Like 'how do I know you?' you might say. Or, 'What is our connection?' But on Facebook, you don't necessarily think like that."
Observed Young: "A new communications technology involves a lot of nuanced social relationships. But it is only after we have had the technology for a while that its boundaries become apparent — the way it is so obvious today that it is rude to say 'What do you want?' when you pick up the phone."

Facebook needs to be managed like everything else in life, publishing veteran Bruce Walsh said. Walsh, who works in marketing and publicity, sees it as a professional tool — it is increasingly common for party and event invitations to be sent out via Facebook, for instance — and said it was invaluable in organizing his 30th high-school reunion.
But when Walsh, 48, is having what he calls "a real party," he still gets on the phone. To invite his real friends.

[tribogota]

Didn't read the article, but I use facebook everyday. I live far from "home" and I keep in touch via the photos and status updates. I also laugh a lot, cause our "professional" status updates in which we lash out against our field, are great. My experience is similar to this forum, some slow conversations that make me laugh, think, or go "oh gee". Up to now, no negative experiences.

[Biciclista]

I like Facebook, it's a good way to keep in touch with some friends and family. I've been approached a couple times by strangers and just told them to go away; and they did.

[Irulan]

Anyone who thinks that all their facebook friends are "real" friends hasn't thought too hard about it.

as for,

You can tell it "more about so & so vs. less about so & so"

They changed that about two weeks ago. You can either hide people or not, there's no inbetween. I have quite a few people hidden as I have no interest in what they post or how often they post it, but I can go look if I want.

I use it to BS with people that I really mostly, and keep it pretty non-intimate. To do otherwise is pretty stupid, but then again people get pretty stupid about internet behaviors. This is nothing new.

I have unfriended people from a past life who contacted me and then I decided I just didn't need those connections. They don't know if you unfriend them; at least they don't get notified.

Part of the reason is that as a future therapist, I don't want my clients knowing about my personal life.

You can set your permissions so that only certain people can see your full (or professional) profile

[Karma007]

I have facebook and twitter, and have not had any issues with either one. I think it's what you make of it. Feel free to find me on twitter @Karma007.

[sgtiger]

I have to agree that it is what you make of it. I've been getting to know some people better though facebook and keeping in touch with my friends more because of it. I'm not constantly playing phone tag with my best girl friends like I used to. We get updated on the little going ons of each others lives that we can then discuss when we get together on the phone or in person. If there's something that you don't want out there, keep it to yourself and let your friends know that you'd like certain faucets of your life not published for the world to see. If they can't respect that, then de-list them. They're probably not your friends anyway.

[Crankin]

I just joined, after a year or so of 2 friends (in real life) bugging me. You don't have to put your relationship status or any of the other things mentioned.
I don't see how people consider 175 people to be real friends. So far, I have 13, and all are people in my family, or old friends from AZ. There were quite a few listed that "could" be my friends, according to Facebook, but when I searched through all 300 (so it seemed) of them, most I didn't know and quite a large minority were people who were friends of my older son in preschool in AZ! The connection was the daughter of one of my friends there, who I did add to my list.
I rarely make a comment. Just don't feel the need to tell people what I am doing every moment. But, I do read what others say. Part of the reason is that as a future therapist, I don't want my clients knowing about my personal life. No pictures up there, either, mostly because I don't know how to do that. But, I really don't want to put any up anyway.
I don't Twitter or text message. I do use IM and I do have a cell phone, but I only put it on when I need to call someone, or when I am going to be out for a long time. Most of the time now, when I am away from home for hours at a time, I am in class, so it's not on. I don't have it on when I ride, unless I am leading or with a group that needs to stay in communication.
I've overheard some moms of teens and kids in college that they feel this is a way to keep in touch with their kids. I feel it's just another way for them to be "helicopter" parents. I didn't want to know everything my kids did! They communicated frequently enough.

[Cataboo]

I have my facebook set up into different groups - people that are acquaintances that I don't want to offend, they're assigned a level of access to my page. They can see some things, they can't see some things... And if I really don't want to see what they're saying, I just tell facebook not to post it on my stream. You can tell it "more about so & so vs. less about so & so"

So people who are saying things that I'm not terribly interested in... I just tell facebook not to show me so much about them. I have some friends from high school that are now stay at home Mom's and that's cool... but I really don't need updates on what their kids are doing 5 or 6 times a day. Every so often it's fun to visit their page and see the new pictures... But no, don't need to know every single time their kids throw up. But they do seem to have like a stay at home mommy support network going, and that's awesome.

I haven't delisted anyone per se. I can't say that I have a huge number of friends on there, because I've been careful to make myself hard to find, and only invite the people that I want to be in contact with.

So there's not all that much drama, it's fun to post family photos and have all my brother's & sisters chime in on it. IT's fun to see what high school & middle school friends are up to now.

I've actually gone and met with one of my friends that I hadn't seen since high school... and we did it as a one on one thing and I don't know any celebrities, so it's not like she can use me to climb the social ladder.

I don't put any information on my facebook page about whether or not I'm in a relationship, so there's no drama about whether or not I'm single. I just didn't fill any of that out - because I'm not defined by whether or not I'm in a relationship or not.

I also don't post things that are too personal in nature - I could have posted that there was a death in the family a couple of times, but seriously... I don't want to have 40 some acquaintances of various amounts commenting on that or trying to say something comforting about it - the people that are important to me already know. I will post a picture of a new bike or a pretty thing that I drove past.

[Cataboo]

I also make sure that I don't have any "work" friends on my facebook... 'cause I don't need them knowing when I'm working

Although, it's blocked at work.

[itself]

You know, the facebook thing, I just don't get. I'm savy with computers and new technology, but facebook makes no sense at all. Hotmail works for me. On facebook it seems like everyone can see your conversations, yuk.

And, another thing for parents to have to monitor.

Lisa

[Selkie]

I don't get Facebook either, but I tend to be private and try to mind my own business (a reaction to working in a very "incestuous" workplace where many people are overly nebby and/or vicious gossips).

All that said, I can understand why people enjoy Facebook, and if it makes them happy, that's super.