Do you still use Facebook?

[ABrown]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I still use it, but I look at it less. Every day it's just the same 100 friends going, "Trump said this thing! wtf! Unfriend me now if you agree," etc..

That's exactly why I don't follow people on Facebook. I have zero interest in the garbage that people post. Instagram is so much better for following people, I just want to see the pictures of whatever is going on in their lives.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Zulithe

It's still the best place to keep in touch with a large chunk of family (especially older or less tech-savvy ones) and former schoolmates. The groups feature is also great if you utilize it properly and get into some well-moderated groups for specific interests.

I don't love Facebook by any means, but it has a good niche as far as I'm concerned.

Yes. It's great if you're a university student. There's always a group for the class where people trade notes share important announcements by the professors, talk **** about professors, etc.

Originally Posted by Refractive Reflections

I've deactivated my account, but not really ready to make the final step in deleting my account. I really only keep it just to maintain connections from old classmates and previous workplaces, but time passes and the relationships don't get maintained, so communication is very rare. Anyone who I want to frequently communicate with, is now on my cellphone.

It's funny when I first started out on Facebook most of my friends and family members were constantly urging me to register onto it. Now most of those that did, hardly ever do use it, or have deactivated/deleted their accounts.

What was most annoying was when classmates or friends (or who I thought were friends at the time), would merely send invites, but would never send any comments (from the few invites I started to accept) or personal messages to me. I quickly learned it was more of their intention to know what I was doing rather than any genuine interest about me or how I was doing. From then on, I still have a lot of invites that I have never even responded to from over 10 years now. As time passed, I saw Facebook became more of a popularity contest than anything else, and my interest rapidly waned. It was feeling like high school all over again. I hardly put any accurate personal information (except an email address if someone actually did want to personally connect with me), and all my pictures were only very small collections of my family and I. I knew then that Facebook's "privacy" standards were anything but a sure thing, which is why I put such bland content on there. So if anybody did hack into it, the most they would see are generic family pictures and ceremonies (weddings and graduations), but all those photos I have already deleted just to not have it on there anymore.




It's not necessarily the post of politics for me, I actually welcome it, but the cumulative effect of: 1) The incessant day after day post (flooding the Facebook newsfeed), 2) being the primary topic of their posts, and 3) the ultimatum of unfriending if you don't exactly agree with my political viewpoints. Fortunately, I only had about one-quarter of my Facebook social circle doing that, and one of them was a local campaign manager for Hillary Clinton.

For me, it kinda died down after the 2016 election at least in my social circle. Then again, I maybe only visit my Facebook page once every 4-6 months whenever I momentarily reactivate it.

Can you even delete your own FB account? Isn't it quite hard to do that compared to deleting your account in other social media websites?

Also, some people only seem to hit you up when they need you to "like" a publication or a page of them so that they can win a contest or a t-shirt. Facebook has always been a battle of likes as has social media since 2010 or so. Isn't Instagram thinking of hiding the number of likes on their website even?

Originally Posted by ABrown

That's exactly why I don't follow people on Facebook. I have zero interest in the garbage that people post. Instagram is so much better for following people, I just want to see the pictures of whatever is going on in their lives.

Some advice: you can be friends with someone but "unfollow" from them while still keeping them in your friends list. So that means you can be friends with them but not see any of the future stuff they post. It's a useful trick if you happen to have a few friends who keep posting cringeworthy content you don't want to see anymore without possibly jeopardising your friendship with them.

[TigerClaw]

I would never unfollow anyone in Facebook regardless if the stuff they post might be considered cringe worthy to some.

I'm pretty good at filtering out the negative stuff and only find the good stuff.

Its the same I do for Twitter. I usually see people make political tweets. I just filter that stuff out from my head.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Can you even delete your own FB account? Isn't it quite hard to do that compared to deleting your account in other social media websites?

It's possible, but they only delete the account after around 30 days. Presumably they're counting on people reactivating their accounts during that period, since if accounts were deleted immediately, and people started doing it en masse, it could practically kill Facebook overnight.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by TigerClaw

I would never unfollow anyone in Facebook regardless if the stuff they post might be considered cringe worthy to some.

I'm pretty good at filtering out the negative stuff and only find the good stuff.

Its the same I do for Twitter. I usually see people make political tweets. I just filter that stuff out from my head.

Yes, you can filter it.

Anyway, like I've said, most of my FB friends don't post much or at all anymore and my feed mostly consists of posts made by companies and pages I follow. Occasionally a friend of mine will post a meme or a joke but it's usually nothing controversial.

[Whatswiththeheadbands?]

I do, but no where near as much as I use Reddit

[CyberCubed]

Facebook is still a thing in 2020? Most people use twitter, reddit, YouTube, and to a lesser extent tumblr.

I don’t know anyone under 30 who uses Facebook. It’s literally for old people. Get with the times and out of the dark ages.

[newfan]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Facebook is still a thing in 2020? Most people use twitter, reddit, YouTube, and to a lesser extent tumblr.

I don’t know anyone under 30 who uses Facebook. It’s literally for old people. Get with the times and out of the dark ages.

You say on a forums site.

[Leo656]

Every wrestler has Facebook. A lot of them also have Twitter but you'll literally get cursed out for not having Facebook as a wrestler in 2020.

It works well for business stuff and promotions and stuff like that.

[Andrew NDB]

The situation is unchanged in 2020:

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

It's gotten angrier and politicized but I definitely wouldn't say "kinda dead." Dead in the sense that people used to share lots of funny anecdotes and creative stuff and now it's just people playing the "who can show the most anger/outrage" game.

[IMJ]

I've been parsing out my social media - that doesn't mean deleting people, but instead I've been splitting my "collecting and hobby life" from my "real life".

What's funny about this is that I barely pay attention to my "real life" (e.g. pages with friends from growing up, school, colleagues from work, etc) social media anymore. Most stuff I do on social media now revolves around my collecting hobbies.

I'm much happier this way, not blending the two and paying less digital attention to the people I physically know.

[Leo656]

What's weird about me is I have my wrestling FB which I use every day, but I have a work-related one under my real name which I haven't bothered with in years. Even all my friends and family from "real life" are on my wrestling page, not the one under my real name.

Some wrestlers have multiple ones for "work" and "personal" but that just seems like too much work. It's not like I have a whole separate "persona" that needs to be kept separately maintained. Same guy, more glitter. No need for separate pages.

Plus I'm not under any illusion that anyone cares about the sh*t I post on FB anyway. I'm pretty boring. But it's good for networking. Just about all my wrestling contacts, and in turn my bookings, came from FB. The rest of them are from actually being at shows, but when you meet someone, they're gonna want to know how to reach you, and in my case they usually ask for FB before anything else.

I don't think anyone really needs it if they're not in a business that requires a lot of networking, though. Most of what I see "civilians" post is just political junk and cat memes.

[newfan]

I've heard that some have lost accounts due to not using a real looking name (for personal use I would imagine, not business) this would put those who like to be anonymous off. Not sure if that is becoming an common thing or has just happened to a few. Again, depends what you are using it for, family and friends or interests.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by newfan

I've heard that some have lost accounts due to not using a real looking name (for personal use I would imagine, not business) this would put those who like to be anonymous off. Not sure if that is becoming an common thing or has just happened to a few. Again, depends what you are using it for, family and friends or interests.

Yeah, you can report any FB profile right now for being a fake name (like, it's one of the pre-populated reasons you can click). I'm no snitch, but I've taken personal satisfaction in being responsible for the deletion of maybe 200 corporate PLANT accounts on FB, on movie/TV show pages. Over recent years. Easy to spot... they joined FB a year ago and hide their friends (so you can't see they have 0) and have 2 posts, both of them about the movie or TV show they're arguing about.

[Leo656]

Actually yeah, that's occasionally a problem for guys I know.

I mean in wrestling "everybody" knows you by your gimmick name. Nobody ever calls anyone by their real name, even backstage. "Hey, Dan!" Dan who? There's a million Dans. Or Mikes or Bobs or Steves. And if they wanna hire you, they're not looking for "Bob Jones" on FB, they're looking for you under your gimmick. It's just easier for everyone. "I wanna book Dark Oracle for a show I'm running, how do I find him?" "Oh, he's on FB but it's his real name, Stephen Juszcepowicz." "....Y'know, just forget it, I'll get someone else." I'm not even kidding.

Like I get the reason some people would be annoyed by it and insist on everyone "being real" but it's caused some hassle for a lot of people who aren't hurting anyone, they're just "living their gimmick" harmlessly.

[Andrew NDB]

Which is where FB becomes an oddity. It was began as a college thing only for college mates... then it expanded. Now people join as "Fang the Destroyer" and such (but if someone reports you, you'll be forced to change it to your real name). I mean, I get it. And apparently you can even remove your last name from it now if you want.

[newfan]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Which is where FB becomes an oddity. It was began as a college thing only for college mates... then it expanded. Now people join as "Fang the Destroyer" and such (but if someone reports you, you'll be forced to change it to your real name). I mean, I get it. And apparently you can even remove your last name from it now if you want.

Oh, that's a recent thing then, when I wanted to do away with my last name there needed to be something there.

As you said, it was originally for people who actually knew each other and then of course things grow and change. It sucks for people who are legit and just want to follow interests anonymously or as Leo described above but yeah I can image a lot of fake/spam accounts.

[ABrown]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Some advice: you can be friends with someone but "unfollow" from them while still keeping them in your friends list. So that means you can be friends with them but not see any of the future stuff they post.

Right, I thought I had made it pretty clear that's what I'm doing.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Facebook is still a thing in 2020? Most people use twitter, reddit, YouTube, and to a lesser extent tumblr.

I thought I had heard like 2-3 years ago that Twitter was dying and no one was using it any more.

I don’t know anyone under 30 who uses Facebook. It’s literally for old people. Get with the times and out of the dark ages.

Well, every day I do see myself as more and more of an old man.

[newfan]

I have people on my friends list who are under 30, granted a smaller number and two of them are running groups but FB doesn't strike me as something which is on the brink of death yet.
Useful to know about the unfollowing, it used to be if you set someone to 'aquaintant' you didn't see their posts (or it seemed) but not the case now.

[Leo656]

Now that I'm working shows more often again, I can definitely say it comes in handy. When I was out of the loop I really only needed to remember people's Birthdays, but FB really does make the whole networking thing much easier. A month ago I was barely in the game anymore, and now I'm back to working for two promotions and possibly two more coming up, including one in PA.

I can see how it might not be useful for everyone but in that circle everyone I know relies on it. Got new glamour shots made? "I'll send them to you on FB." Meet a new promoter you wanna work for? "Who are you on FB? I'll look at your pics and stuff and we'll take it from there." Very convenient.