Facebook Hater

Someone sent me this:

Hey there you face­book-hater,

I’m forced to con­tact you though the bor­ing medi­um of gmail, since you are too cool to be on face­book. I guess all the hilar­i­ous com­ments, and inter­est­ing videos and pic­tures that I post are not rel­e­vant to you. That’s fine, I guess if I was a tru­ly inter­est­ing per­son I would know how to make my own per­son­al­ized blog. My per­son­al life’s tapes­try is worth­less in your eyes, because it has been woven with the low class, and eas­i­ly obtain­able fibers offered by face­book. If every­one can do it, then is must be crass.

But I did­n’t email you to lec­ture you on your elit­ist, seclu­sion­ary stance towards all the peo­ple who would like to be your friend and share the inter­est­ing tid-bits of their ever-chang­ing lives with you through an easy, fun, and con­ve­nient social net­work­ing device, which can only invade your pri­va­cy as much as you let it…

It’s fun­ny cause I bare­ly said any­thing to him about Facebook. As usu­al, I just explained that I don’t hate it, but don’t think it’s nec­es­sary for me when I have a per­son­al domain that gives me com­plete con­trol of my con­tent (and pri­va­cy). This is my polite answer. But he saw through all that and quite ele­gant­ly summed up how I feel about com­mu­ni­cat­ing through Facebook in the first para­graph of his e‑mail.

14 comments

  1. I don’t know. I think you’re in com­plete con­trol only if you’re IT savvy enough. I know lots of peo­ple who use FB have zero idea of what kind of secu­ri­ty risks they face, and they take no secu­ri­ty mea­sures. An inter­est­ing thing is it’s more like­ly that you can learn about a person’s pri­vate life by sim­ply googling the person’s name in west­ern soci­eties than in east­ern soci­eties.

    • It’s true that Facebook is a great tool for peo­ple who aren’t IT savvy enough, but what this per­son explained (which is also how I feel) is that if one is real­ly com­mit­ted to express­ing one­self, one would branch out beyond Facebook and pick up the skills need­ed to run a per­son­al web­site. Or per­haps hire some­one else to set it up for you.

      Why is it that it’s eas­i­er to find out about some­one by Googling in Western soci­ety? Is it because peo­ple here tend to put more per­son­al infor­ma­tion online?

      • The tech­nol­o­gy is chang­ing so fast you have to be per­son­al­ly real­ly into it. They come up with new ways of crack­ing codes and caus­ing hav­ocs every­day.

        Yep, east­ern­ers are more reserved when it comes to reveal­ing per­son­al things in the pub­lic domain. Aren’t you afraid some­one would use the infor­ma­tion against you? All I need to do is google your name, and it ‘ll lead me to every­thing about you.

      • Nope, I’m not con­cerned about per­son­al infor­ma­tion being used against me. I fol­low a quote that Will Rogers once said: “Live that you would­n’t be ashamed to sell the fam­i­ly par­rot to the town gos­sip.”

  2. Bwu…wha?

    Hahaha, wow, I know fan­boy­ism is all over the place, but I did­n’t know Facebook has fan­boys of its own.

    Some peo­ple take things like this too seri­ous­ly with­out real­is­ing the main rea­sons or motives peo­ple do things. They jump to what­ev­er they want in its defense at the slight­est whiff that some­one says some­thing remote­ly crit­i­cal (though not nec­es­sar­i­ly neg­a­tive) about it.

    I guess you’re going to leave a per­son like this be. After all, if there is any­thing to stay far away from, it’s not to feed the fan­boys.

    • Hahahah, maybe some con­text is need­ed; I know this guy and he’s a bit of a jok­er, so what he said was meant to be slight­ly tongue-in-cheek. He was­n’t real­ly try­ing to con­vince me of the ben­e­fits of Facebook, he was just try­ing to be self-dep­re­cat­ing about peo­ple who use it, for the sake of humour.

      I think what he wrote shows a lot of intel­li­gence because most peo­ple on Facebook just use it blind­ly, with­out any desire (or need, which could be con­sid­ered worse in my opin­ion) to move beyond the restrict­ed and con­ve­nient con­fines of such a medi­um.

  3. It’s true Jeff — you are a total­ly inter­net snob :)

    • Okay, admit­ted­ly, it isn’t the first time I’ve heard this.

  4. And now you will scoff at me because of my typo.… I’m hor­ri­fied!

    • Admittedly, I did­n’t notice the typo until you point­ed it out either.

  5. Wat??? Someone sup­port­ing face­book dogged­ly in the mid­dle of a trend to ditch it? Puhleese.

    • It was­n’t a com­plete­ly seri­ous let­ter or attempt on his part.

  6. seems like satire, or sounds like the next step Facebook would take as an auto­mat­ic let­ter to invite peo­ple to join. when you want to erase your account FB says poignant­ly oh but friendX will miss you and nev­er be able to con­tact you again…won’t you recon­sid­er. they throw every guilt but fluffy pup­pies in body casts.

    • I would­n’t put it past Facebook to (even­tu­al­ly) pull a stunt like this. It seems like all social media com­mu­ni­ties sell out in some way because it’s a dif­fi­cult mod­el to sus­tain finan­cial­ly.

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