{"id":1929,"date":"2009-09-01T22:21:47","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T22:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/owenstrachan.com\/?p=1929"},"modified":"2009-09-01T22:21:47","modified_gmt":"2009-09-01T22:21:47","slug":"social-media-update-quitting-facebook-or-maybe-quitters-do-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtlife\/2009\/09\/social-media-update-quitting-facebook-or-maybe-quitters-do-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media Update: Quitting Facebook, or, Maybe Quitters Do Win"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"facebook\"There is a cottage media industry out there that writes endlessly about social networking.\u00a0 Some pieces from this corner are skippable, others are culturally noteworthy.\u00a0 As with the Twitter usage post from last week, this NYT feature on people quitting Facebook, entitled \u201cFacebook Exodus,\u201d is worth a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apparently, lots of folks are leaving Facebook, albeit in different \u201cwaves\u201d as writer Virginia Heffernan suggests:<\/p>\n

The disillusionment with Facebook has come in waves. An early faction lost faith in 2008, when Facebook\u2019s beloved Scrabble application, Scrabulous, was pulled amid copyright issues. It was suddenly clear that Facebook was not just a social club but also an expanding force on the Web, beholden to corporate interests. A later group, Harmsen\u2019s crowd, grew frustrated last winter when Facebook seemed to claim perpetual ownership of users\u2019 contributions to the site. (Facebook later adjusted its membership contract, but it continues to integrate advertising, intellectual property and social life.) A third wave of dissenters appears to be bored with it, obscurely sore or just somehow creeped out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s a further explanation.\u00a0 I don\u2019t entirely get it, but the guy sounds intelligent enough, and his last sentence seems right:<\/p>\n

Another friend, who didn\u2019t want his name used, found that Facebook undermined his whole notion of online friendship. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to think of your circle of \u2018Friends\u2019 as a coherent circle, clear and moated, when in fact the splay of overlap\/network makes drip\/action painting a better (visual) analogy.\u201d Something happened to this drip painting that he won\u2019t discuss. He said, \u201cPostings that seem private can scatter and slip unpredictably into a sort of semipublic status.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here\u2019s another example of why people are quitting the site:<\/p>\n

That friend was not the only Facebook dissenter who was reticent about specifics. Many seem to have just lost their appetite for it: they just stopped wanting to look at other people\u2019s photos and r\u00e9sum\u00e9s and updates, or have their own subject to scrutiny. Some ex-users seemed shaken, even heartbroken, by their breakups with Facebook. \u201cI primarily left Facebook because I was wasting so much time on it,\u201d my friend Caroline Harting told me by e-mail. \u201cI felt fairly detached from my Facebook buddies because I rarely directly contacted them.\u201d Instead, she felt as if she stalked them, spending hours a day looking at their pages without actually saying hello.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So there you have it.<\/a> People are quitting Facebook for a variety of reasons.\u00a0 We don\u2019t get many statistics to support this case, but the anecdotal evidence seems true enough.<\/p>\n

Speaking personally, Facebook was fine for a while, especially when I was single.\u00a0 It was a fun way to communicate, reconnect, and the like.\u00a0 Now, though, it seems like a place for certain folks who want to write about their lives to share that with a \u201csemipublic\u201d audience.\u00a0 Generally speaking, I do not find these lives interesting enough to warrant my time.\u00a0 Others may feel the same.<\/p>\n

Really, social networking is fine, and it\u2019s all the rage, but it seems to me like a fun but time-limited platform.\u00a0 There\u2019s a \u201ctake your breath away\u201d effect that works for a while, but when that\u2019s gone, you\u2019re not left with a whole lot\u2013some folks who overshare, occasional funny or important pieces of information, and a whole lot of stuff that wastes your time and somehow leaves you feeling less happy than before you logged on.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t imagine that my experience is normative, and some people really do benefit from social networking and use it to good ends.\u00a0 It can be good for advertising, networking, praying with information, evangelizing (would that we Christian Facebook users did more of this!), reconnecting, updating, and seeing what your high school classmates now look like.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, though, social networking seems to me to often demonstrate the \u201cthinness\u201d of our lives, to use a David Wells term I like alot. What is it about the modern person that so needs to share with and be connected to massive amounts of people?\u00a0 Christian or otherwise, is this a healthy trend?\u00a0 What good, lasting good, comes of it?\u00a0 Or does social networking often highlight our less flattering features\u2013narcissism, need to be linked to popular\/cool\/attractive folks and exciting events, endless talking\/communicating, oversharing, and so on?<\/p>\n

If you stay on Facebook, and you use it for good ends (like making meaningful kingdom connections, and especially encouraging other Christians and evangelizing friends), great.\u00a0 Keep at it.\u00a0 I\u2019m still on it, and I hope to use it for good insofar as I can.\u00a0 Many of us may find, though, that because of limited time and energy, we have to quit Facebook.<\/p>\n

Maybe we\u2019ll find that the old adage is wrong\u2013maybe winners do quit, and quitters do win.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a cottage media industry out there that writes endlessly about social networking.\u00a0 Some pieces from this corner are skippable, others are culturally noteworthy.\u00a0 As with the Twitter usage post from last week, this NYT feature on people quitting Facebook, entitled \u201cFacebook Exodus,\u201d is worth a read. Apparently, lots of folks are leaving Facebook, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[301],"tags":[1237,1238,13217,2420,13271,3018],"class_list":["post-1929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-networking","tag-facebook","tag-facebook-exodus","tag-new-york-times","tag-quitting-facebook","tag-social-networking","tag-virginia-heffernan"],"yoast_head":"\nSocial Media Update: Quitting Facebook, or, Maybe Quitters Do Win<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is a cottage media industry out there that writes endlessly about social networking.\u00a0 Some pieces from this corner are skippable, others are\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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