Friends - casual or otherwise

[Dave2002]

I saw this article which raises a few interesting points - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/s...=pocket-newtab

I don't want to have a zillion FB "friends" (I don't have an FB account, and don't want one), and I don't want a lot of the stuff which younger people seem to think is essential, but I don't want the opposite extreme of not having any friends either.

I also think some younger people have problems because of technology. People who can't make relationships because "everybody (else) uses something called tinder or grinder, or whatever", so "nobody" actually tries to make friends with people they might actually meet. Sad world!

[pastoralguy]

I saw this article which raises a few interesting points - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/s...=pocket-newtab

I don't want to have a zillion FB "friends" (I don't have an FB account, and don't want one)

[french frank]

As far as 'my' Facebook 'friends' are concerned, it's a basic question: 'What will they do for FoR3?'. If I hadn't been bludgeoned into starting a Facebook page for FoR3, I wouldn't have one myself. But the FoR3 page is okay for promotion now and again

[Serial_Apologist]

Links to potential friendships provided in Facebook offer the chance of meeting somebody from within areas of common interest whom one may have long wished to meet. This is slightly different from the world of passing conversations, and the benefits, inner and practical, which the article also talks about.

[Jonathan]

Indeed - as a shell collector (conchologist) I've made hundreds of friends with other collectors from around the world thanks to Facebook. I've exchanged shells with many people from all over the place. It's proved very useful for interacting with people who have similar interests.

[Dave2002]

Msgs 3 and 4 suggest that for some FB has benefits. For me it's still something I'd very much rather avoid completely.

I dislike intensely the way that it appears to form a walled garden, with the only way in being to create an account. There seems ample evidence that it then harvests data, and in some cases misuses it.

The article mentioned at the outset was not necessarily recommending FB, but rather suggesting that most of us need "friends", even if they are only loose ones, like the postman, the person in the newsagents, someone we encouter on buses or trains etc. Perhaps men are different, as I think many women who have school children probably meet other similar people at the school gates from time to time, and they don't always stand around in silence. There may be people who have been commuting on trains for many years, who notice their travelling companions, yet have never talked to them.

[MrGongGong]

Msgs 3 and 4 suggest that for some FB has benefits. For me it's still something I'd very much rather avoid completely.

I dislike intensely the way that it appears to form a walled garden, with the only way in being to create an account. There seems ample evidence that it then harvests data, and in some cases misuses it.

No sh*t Sherlock
FB has ALWAYS been a data mining organisation
that's the gig
You share your data in exchange for some things that you might find useful or not

For me, it works well
BUT it's not compulsory for everyone

To take part you have to join in, so it's not really a "walled garden" at all. If you don't want to travel don't get a passport etc
I'm sure many here would be most welcome in the PCME FB group (Pretentious Classical Music Elitists)

[Dave2002]

For me, it works well
BUT it's not compulsory for everyone

To take part you have to join in, so it's not really a "walled garden" at all. If you don't want to travel don't get a passport etc
I'm sure many here would be most welcome in the PCME FB group (Pretentious Classical Music Elitists)

It is walled in the sense that sometimes one finds there is evidence of something or someone in FB, but one can't acccess the data, or even contact the person concerned without joining. Even 10 years ago I was wary of this, and on odd occasions when I found there might have been something inside the FB zone (such as the email of of friend I lost touch with) I usually found ways round that without having to go into FB.

When Spotify tried to make everyone join by registering using FB I objected, and so did others.

There is enough evidence that FB and its founders have been indulging in malpractice - either deliberately or otherwise - that I don't want anything to do with it. Possibly the founders didn't intend things to be bad, but who can tell at this stage.

Similarly Google has some really bad features now - again - was it intended, or just an unfortunate consequence of the way it works and has been used?

Notwithstanding that, if I meet casual acquaintances - the people at the bus stops, in the shops etc., I do talk to them, and one can never quite tell whether such people will actually turn out to be angels in the future. We do not live in isolation (mostly) and personal contacts, even very slight ones, are sometimes helpful (a word which I'd rather use than "useful", which suggests ulterior motives - possibly based on financial profit, or preferment).

[Bryn]

It is walled in the sense that sometimes one finds there is evidence of something or someone in FB, but one can't acccess the data, or even contact the person concerned without joining. Even 10 years ago I was wary of this, and on odd occasions when I found there might have been something inside the FB zone (such as the email of of friend I lost touch with) I usually found ways round that without having to go into FB.

When Spotify tried to make everyone join by registering using FB I objected, and so did others.

There is enough evidence that FB and its founders have been indulging in malpractice - either deliberately or otherwise - that I don't want anything to do with it. Possibly the founders didn't intend things to be bad, but who can tell at this stage.

Similarly Google has some really bad features now - again - was it intended, or just an unfortunate consequence of the way it works and has been used?

Notwithstanding that, if I meet casual acquaintances - the people at the bus stops, in the shops etc., I do talk to them, and one can never quite tell whether such people will actually turn out to be angels in the future. We do not live in isolation (mostly) and personal contacts, even very slight ones, are sometimes helpful (a word which I'd rather use than "useful", which suggests ulterior motives - possibly based on financial profit, or preferment).

Even if one gets a friend who is an FB subscriber to use the dreaded thing to try and contact an old acquaintance on one's behalf, chances are that that old acquaintance has tired of FB and never checks for updates. Same with Linkedin.

[Dave2002]

Even if one gets a friend who is an FB subscriber to use the dreaded thing to try and contact an old acquaintance on one's behalf, chances are that that old acquaintance has tired of FB and never checks for updates. Same with Linkedin.

I do have a Linkein account, which I never use. There's not much in there of interest.

One of my friends said that he did find FB useful - I think after his mother died - for chasing up people, and that he hadn't had any problems with FB, but he had had problems caused by Linkedin. I really don't want to have anything to do with any of these things now.

However, if one of the real people I might meet were to help me with a car, or transport, or help if I or anyone else with me were having a medical issue, I'd be very grateful.

[HighlandDougie]

In the past, I have rarely used FB (or "F**kbook as one of my friends calls it) but it has proved very useful over the past six/seven months with the process of applying for and obtaining a "Carte de Séjour Permanente", which, post-Brexit for Brits in France, will be an essential adjunct to life in France, unless, like MickyD, you've become a French citizen. There is supposed to be a standard process with guidelines laid down by the Ministry of the Interior, subject to a degree of interpretation by each of the 100 Préfectures which is where the problems start. The Préfecture des Alpes-Maritimes has a department for foreigners, which deals with applications for "cartes" (as well as requests for asylum, citizenship and a host of other processes). It provides guidelines for the documentation which is needed, as well as where and how to apply, with those guidelines in turn being subject to some degree of interpretation by individual members of staff. In short, the process is bureaucratic, muddled, time-consuming, rather stressful and at times a bit arbitrary.

Someone started a local Alpes-Maritimes F/book group for people thinking about applying/actually applying etc, which is firmly non-political (any posts straying in that direction are swiftly removed) and with a specific purpose of being a repository for tips, advice, information (on anything from dealing with queue-jumping, not annoying the Security guys - there to stop not infrequent fights - how early to arrive before it opens which was latterly 4.30am for doors opening at 9am etc etc), consolation when applications are rejected and the odd bit of mutual congratulation when it all goes to plan. It has been absolutely invaluable for myself and several hundred other FB members such that one knows pretty much exactly what documentation to take, its format (what needs to be in French) and the amount of it needed by whomever you happen to see on the other side of the guichet. Thanks to the FB Group, Brits get congratulated on their impeccably prepared documentation, which makes the job of the staff a lot easier. Not so, alas, asylum-seekers, families from Somalia, refugees from sub-Saharan African countries like Benin or Cameroon and other waifs and strays for whom no such - it has to be said, privileged - group exists (demeaning and profoundly disheartening to be sent away after queuing for five hours because of one missing and obscure document).

Anyway, my apologies for rambling on but I simply wanted to say that social media like Facebook can have a really practical purpose (as well as being a repository for kitten videos) as the sharing of information and experience would, simply, have been wholly impracticable without it.

[richardfinegold]

My son got married about 10 years ago and put their wedding pictures on FB. In order to get any one required an account. So I registered and the fun part was getting contacted by about half a dozen individuals that I hadn't seen or heard from in 30 years. One turned out to be greatly annoying- my College Girlfriend who apparently suffered a brain disorder in an auto accident and was disabled but spent her time sending extremely long and chaotic missives.
I finally had to stop answering and then she became somewhat enraged by that and then stopped sending me stuff altogether, just as well. Any joy that I had in contacting her was dissipated and I much would have preferred to have her frozen in time in my memories. And in the last few years whenever I go on FB I get adds in my feed related to recent net searches, and this is creepy.

[MrGongGong]

It is walled in the sense that sometimes one finds there is evidence of something or someone in FB, but one can't acccess the data, or even contact the person concerned without joining. Even 10 years ago I was wary of this, and on odd occasions when I found there might have been something inside the FB zone (such as the email of of friend I lost touch with) I usually found ways round that without having to go into FB.

When Spotify tried to make everyone join by registering using FB I objected, and so did others.

There is enough evidence that FB and its founders have been indulging in malpractice - either deliberately or otherwise - that I don't want anything to do with it. Possibly the founders didn't intend things to be bad, but who can tell at this stage.

Similarly Google has some really bad features now - again - was it intended, or just an unfortunate consequence of the way it works and has been used?
.

That's the gig though
I'm often amazed that folks don't realise this
There is plenty of information that one can only access by joining things, nothing new about that

I have a friend who refuses to use Google completely as a point of stubborn principle.
BUT he is quite happy for others to do so in order for him to navigate or look at Youtube etc
to be honest it's a total pain in the arse as he really DOES use it but through others.....

In my first coment I said

"No sh*t Sherlock
FB has ALWAYS been a data mining organisation
that's the gig"

Do you avoid other organisations that indulge in malpractice ?
If so do you ever get on a train and so on ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Surely it's one thing to avoid organisations that indulge in malpractice as much as possible, unless one is into that sort of thing, or if avoiding them is impossible. All the shops I go to still use far too much plastic in packaging, but I'd be spending twice as much time and dosh using only small outlets not part of the bigger chains that supposedly make up an important part of employment in the "service sector" once promulgated by Thatcher and most politicians since as the nation's salvation. Otherwise one starts to sound rather sanctimonious, which I would not have thought of Dave2002, based on what I have read of his posts on here!

[teamsaint]

FB is there to mine data.
Trains are there to move people around, the pollution is an unwanted side effect.