I could do this with email and calendars, but I don't know 95% of my friend's email addresses. We talk over SMS and Facebook Messenger. If I wanted to find another one of my friend's I just search for their name, and if they have privacy settings set to only allow friends of friends to search for me - that's OK too!

I don't have to ask a friend for their email address, or their phone number and then ask that person for their email address. I don't have to phone or SMS people to see if they want to come, and I have an easy way to track it.

Sure, we all got along fine before social media. But Facebook has made planning social events ridiculously easy.

I haven't posted on my wall since 2013 and none of my information like age, email, phone number, etc is public. Sure Facebook has access to all sorts of conversations I've had over the years, but so do my local ISP's and data centres.

For anything that I'd truly like to keep private, I use PGP, OTR or chat in person.

The freedom from data being stored about the respective persons?

The network effect works both ways, I was one of the few people initially who didn't adopt facebook, so anything that involved me had to be communicated over mail.

I mean, I get that a lot of social media content is narcissistic and vapid, but it's tool that you choose how to use.

I don't really appreciate the snarky insinuation that using Facebook makes me somehow uneducated or conformist.

> a) You have a career that requires some PR management

That certainly sounds like an attempt to insult those who do use Facebook.

> but can you image the great minds and innovators of our generation [...] updating their FB?

Absolutely, the same way that great minds of past generations had friends, went to social events, and wrote letters. Facebook is just the latest and easiest way to maintain the social bonds which are important to nearly all of us (including so-called "great minds").

I don't post status updates often (probably once a month), but I log into Facebook multiple times a day. It's great to see what my friends are up to and what they care about.

If not for seeing my friend at SpaceX post about today's launch, I probably would have missed out on watching it.

Get off your high horse. If you don't want to use Facebook, that's fine. That doesn't make those of us who do neanderthals.

I don't think I've come close to calling anyone a neanderthal, sorry if this has riled some emotions. If you are younger, you will certainly have a lot more pressure to use it (you can be ostracized), so you probably should use it.

Also, people tend to have a cognitive bias against judging themselves as conformist... myself included. We probably all are more than we would like to admit.

I recently read the Wulf's The Invention of Nature, a biography of Alexander von Humboldt - from the middle of his life up until his death Humboldt wrote 2000 to 3000 letters per year, crazy if you think how much work a "regular" letter is.

Your point about the great minds of the past is spot on. There's a reason why people buy letters from famous painters. I'm sure Van Gogh would at least have had a twitter account.

Anyways, based on artists I know - who aren't digital artists/ graphic designers, a scene where most tech companies are viewed as just an extension of greedy capitalism, I have serious doubts Van Gogh would be an active user on Twitter.

Your post laid out three users of social media. One was a professional managing a brand. The other two were narcissists.

If you're not above it, what were you trying to get at with that post?

I don't use but my wife does, because our extended families are on it. Grammas, cousins, high school friends, that couple across the street, the realtor, ... etc.

Could they use email? Probably, but they don't they use Facebook for whatever reason.

Personally I don't have an interest in it but like hearing once in a while how so and so is doing. I usually communicate via email, google chat, or phone.

One thing I never quite got was Twitter though, just never really saw an interest it, never understood it...

But your last, fairly insulting question could be rephrased as "would an educated, independent thinker..., have any reason to communicate with anyone else?"

Facebook is just a communication tool.

Party invitations. Facebook is Evite.