Facebook questions

I am one of those weird people who is not on Facebook. My life is boring, I like my privacy, and there is no one from my past I really want to reconnect with. I have a Google account but I don't even do much with that. I use my first and middle names and the profile picture is not a picture of me.

However, I am starting to wonder if I should sign up. The reason is because I do follow a couple Facebook pages, I occasionally check a few others, and there is at least one I can't access because I haven't signed up. None of these are people I know in real life. Some are musicians, some have blogs I am interested in. The past two days I have not been able to see the comments. This is not the first time something weird like that has happened.

Is there any advantage to signing up for Facebook?

Can I do it without creating a page?

Thanks in advance.

I did because a lot of small companies these days seem to conduct customer service exclusively on FB, they don't see the disadvantages of using a closed platform because most people are using it. Just put minimal information on and friend a few people and your account should be fine, you don't have to interact much, or interact accurately. You will certainly know some people who have 100s of "friends" and these people will probably just accept you if you try to add them so that makes your account look more real.

I guess it could be said that you have to "create a page," but what it looks like is totally up to you. IIRC, you have to go through a questionnaire to list information about yourself and your interests, but you can do a SKIP on each one and leave them blank.

Choosing to be on FB depends on your lifestyle.

Most no kill animal rescues have FB pages. We do SHARES on a couple dozen, getting the word out. Naomi came into our life because her picture popped up on Dh's feed. Which kind of made for a head scratcher because she was dumped at a kill shelter and we don't join or do LIKEs on those pages. I just can't bear to look at the animals destined for a very likely death. Maybe it was a friend of Dh's who did a LIKE or a SHARE and it popped up on his page. Or maybe it was weird fate. Anyway, she's with us and is a wonderful new family member.

Being RVers, there are scads of pages that document travel destinations and advice. I'm a genealogy nerd; ditto on the sites. Most FB groups are private; more than likely you won't be able to see updates unless you join. Joining doesn't mean that you have to post, if you read posts from people that are offensive (gawd, Trump has sure made the dolts come spinning out of the woodwork), you can block them individually so you no longer read their bilge. I have a LOT of people blocked. You can accept people as "friends" without following them. I do that with one sister who posts some of the most ridiculous trash. I stay FB connected so we can trade messages, without having her nonsense pop up on my feed.

We don't text and our family members no longer do e-mail. FB is a good place to exchange messages.

IF you are judicious about its use, I'd say that FB can be a useful tool. I don't pay much attention to many of the FB rules. For one, I don't use my legal name. I have more than one account, having created a travel page under a different name that has some public settings. My "friends" are mostly family members, a couple of Bratfree folks, and a few people I've followed on groups of common interest. In the five or six years I've used FB, I've gathered less than two dozen "friends." If I don't know the person or have something in common, I blithely ignore friend requests from those people. Or delete them.

FB has a deserved bad reputation in some respects, but there are ways to maintain control and use it in a sensible manner.

Thanks for the replies. I am still not sure. I hate the idea of being forced to use Facebook, but I'm tired of missing out on things because I don't have it.

ETA: I still can't see any comments. I wonder if something is malfunctioning or if Facebook has decided to start blocking them from people who don't have an account?

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ondinette
ETA: I still can't see any comments. I wonder if something is malfunctioning or if Facebook has decided to start blocking them from people who don't have an account?

I don't think it's a matter of "blocking" but "allowing." The settings might be such that you have to have an account to see messages.

If you don't want to be involved with FB, but have access to some of its features, set up a throwaway e-mail account somewhere - Yahoo, Google .... create a FB account with a bogus name, and fine tooth the settings to make sure people can't see or contact you.

I'd say that if you're curious, make a FB page with a fake name and random profile pic (say, some nice nature shot). Fill in as little info as possible. Go through the security settings and lock it down so no one can see anything except the name and profile pic unless they're on your friends list.

Also, there are some nice browser extensions that limit Facebook's ability to track you, mine your info, and bomb you with ads. I run FB Purity. It pretty much makes FB my bitch when it comes to visual content. I also use AdBlock to get rid of ads on most web pages. A friend also recommended Ghostery, which is some pretty nice anti-tracking software.

I am not on FB, either. I tried it for a week several years ago and immediately closed the account. I recall Betty White saying in her hilarious SNL monologue back in 2010 saying how she thought it was a huge waste of time. I agree. Don't fret, Ondinette.

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deegee
I recall Betty White saying in her hilarious SNL monologue back in 2010 saying how she thought it was a huge waste of time.

Gentle irony from the awesome lady.

She does have her own FB page, but I wonder how much of it is her own participation and how much of it is really an assistant asking her what she'd like to post that day. I'm sure she's updated as to how many LIKEs she's given. At this point, it's over 2 million. Scrolling through the page, she has used it to promote her animal causes. I'm sure she is aware of how much more quickly animals move through the rescue systems; how a greater number of animals have been saved; because of social media.

Among individuals, I think it is a waste ~90% of the time. I deleted most of the young people in my list because (as I told them frankly) I got tired of seeing their stupid duck faces at bars and parties. Selfies don't interest me. As a tool for distributing information, it's awesome. I'm on about 20 sites that cover my interest in genealogy and history. Instead of having to visit their individual sites daily, I get updates on FB. If there is something pertinent going on, I follow the link from their FB site to the website.

Facebook has its pros and cons. It's one of the most popular ways to become and stay connected to others, including finding former classmates or family members. Many businesses will respond to you much quicker via their Facebook page than if you email or call them, and other pages have content that is only available to members of Facebook and/or followers of that particular page.

And when you start friending people, you have to see their stupid bullshit in their feed. But the beauty of Facebook is that you can unfollow people, meaning you remain friends on the site, but do not see their updates in your news feed. I've unfollowed plenty of people who I remain friends with because I don't give a shit about their kids, their religion or they post 25 updates a day and it's all pointless garbage.

Also, there are quite a few CF groups on Facebook, some of which are by invitation only and anything you say in them will not be visible to anyone but other people in the group. I generally don't use it all that much because it doesn't load that well on my connection, but it is a good way to keep in touch with people. It wouldn't hurt to try it, I suppose, but you don't need to keep your account if you don't see the allure of any of it. I use my real name on my page (but I found out there are nine other people with my exact same name just in my state), but I set it so my friends list is not visible, people can only see my updates and all that crap if they're on my friend list and my profile photo is a drawing, so my account isn't all that identifying. People only know which page is mine if I give them the exact URL.

Got a locked down profile I access a few times a year. Opened it to have a way to see photos of family and while it has grown I keep it manicured. Any more time on it that one hour a year would be overkill, IMO. Current location is displayed as Antarctica and not displaying my real name either. Had a friend PIA who I was forced to be friends with in elementary school, a colossal tattle tell if one ever existed, who sent me a friend invite/message or two right when I was in the midst of an overseas move. When I didn't reply immediately because I had much more important things to deal with (language barrier, navigating the area, finding those darn light bulbs so I could see in the hallway, finding a car so I could stop hitchhiking, no gas due to a strike and grocery stores at 40% of capacity due to same strike, living out of a suitcase, etc.) she contacted my mother to ask her to tell me to reply to her message. Guess what bitch, your reign of terror ended when you moved away. Some people never change. And then she unfriended me, hoping to generate drama. I was thrilled. I refuse any involvement in childish drama.

Facebook is all about Child Worship. I can't tell you how many of my creative childfree friends post their music, stories, artworks etc. on Facebook, only to see it get 10 or less likes. But whoenever the poor ugly breeders who've been on welfare for years post ultra sounds or bloody newborn pics (that we all get to pay for) they gets hundreds of hundred of likes and Facebook keeps these posts at the tops of the feed for weeks, using their family friendly algorithms to ensure making more people trumps creative expression hundreds of times over. FB really grinds the gears of most of my childless friends for that reason.

That's more a problem of having too many breeder "friends", lol!

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ianyoung1982
Facebook is all about Child Worship. I can't tell you how many of my creative childfree friends post their music, stories, artworks etc. on Facebook, only to see it get 10 or less likes. But whoenever the poor ugly breeders who've been on welfare for years post ultra sounds or bloody newborn pics (that we all get to pay for) they gets hundreds of hundred of likes and Facebook keeps these posts at the tops of the feed for weeks, using their family friendly algorithms to ensure making more people trumps creative expression hundreds of times over. FB really grinds the gears of most of my childless friends for that reason.

I signed up to FB using my real name about .. oh, five or six years ago. I eagerly accepted most of my former high school classmates out of curiosity about their lives 30 years after graduation. It was almost instant boredom because all their pictures and updates were about kids and grandkids, plus their views were uber conservative. If I kept any of them around to today, most likely I'd be seeing a lot of Trump crap. The most disappointing was my BFF from those days, a young woman with a sparkling personality and very-very intelligent. I thought she must have gone far in life, since she was one of the few who went away to college, leaving the small, podunk Arkansas town where we attended high school (I left that state a few months after high school and was glad to shed that shit sticking mud from my heels). Instead, she chose poorly when it came to relationships, had kids almost immediately, and returned to that f* town because she needed support from her parents. I was in tears at seeing the picture of a frumpy, defeated looking woman working at a small factory for the outstanding wage of $9/hour. She saw me as a person who could be a wailing wall, expecting me to be sympathetic to her complaints about her failed marriages, her doleful life, the disappointment of never having had the career she hoped to. Her one joy was her fugly kids and religion, which she expounded on in great detail.

I gradually stopped answering her messages and did a fade. Then I deleted that account and set up my current one. I did reconnect with a couple of high school folks. Both without kids, one gay (boy, did HE have a rough life as a teen in an Arkansas town with a population that was and continues to be, <1000 people.)

My old account showed me that gross side of FB. The new one is tailored ruthlessly to my own preferences, which is why it works.