People make such a big deal out of how impossible their social lives would be without Facebook but never actually try it. I honestly don't get it.

I have an amusing anecdote about being the one friend without Facebook.

Someone told me about a birthday party- they told me where it was and what time to be there. They did not tell me that our group was not actually invited and our arrival would be a surprise.

The rest of the group was half an hour late. I was not. They all wanted to arrive together and were delayed, but no one filled me in on the new time.

And that's the story about how I awkwardly attended a party for 30min where I knew no one but the birthday woman and it was obvious to everyone that I was not actually invited.

All was well once my friends arrived. Still, what a nightmare that was.

So either I can be there and find out about them, or I can hope someone I know notices them and notifies me.

Both are terrible options.

One challenge I face, though, is that I'm unwilling to let my Facebook account break out of its silo by linking it to anything else (and of course I'd love to kill it entirely) so event discovery becomes more challenging without the private groups I'm currently a member of and family/friends information FB currently holds.

That only works if they already know you. If you wanna start something new, it might benefit from having the outreach that facebook has.

Guys, you're proving what everybody is starting to realize; Facebook has become masters at making people addicted to them. Every excuse I see like this one is nothing more than justification for an addiction. I hear it all the time. Me: "I'm not on Facebook." Them: "Oh, I could never do that" and then the proceeds to outline some extenuating circumstance that they claim is unique to them which is in fact unique to NOBODY. Because Facebook is that good at making people addicted to it.

I challenge you to try it. Disable your account for six weeks and see how you feel. If you're miserable, fine. Go back. But at least try it!

Really all I want is a solid app that's only Facebook's event system and friend lists and nothing else.

But I can't see any growth-motivated company ever making that and just stopping there. I'd even pay for it, if I thought they wouldn't try to make more money after that. Maybe it would have to be a non-profit.

My co-founder and I are building a groups and events system (like Meetup) that has a friends list and things like instant messaging. Our business model at the moment is freemium with ads and a limited organizer experience (you can create small groups/events) or we are offering a small subscription ~$5/mo. The subscription model removes the ads, unlocks all organizer features, and removes all limits on organizing groups/events such as being able to create a hierarchical organization with the tooling to manage it.

We are currently in YC Startup School as Geddy at geddy.io and we plan to launch soon.

My main concern is that if you're in startup-crazy VC-funded world, you're eventually going to try to make more money, somehow, off my presence on your site -- through selling data or advertising or whatever.

If I do join it, I'll immediately leave when that happens. But if I think it might happen, I won't join it. The thing that would get me really interested would be a promise (ideally a legally restrictive one, like being a B-corp or a non-profit) that that won't happen.

I think that everyone (at least in my age group?) is slowly becoming enormously skeptical of companies offering services. I _want_ to use a service forever and have it be good and trustworthy. But in practice I feel like I'm getting tricked and manipulated at every turn, which is just slowly turning me into a luddite.

I believe you still need a FB account.

There are plenty of paid games that do not include any kind of microtransaction. I'd consider the paid-games ecosystem to be surprisingly healthy these days. But to be fair, it's all console/PC. Mobile games are likely to remain a F2P wasteland.

Facebook and similar make me wary of getting excited about anything which seems superficially good without first understanding the underlying intentions of the creators.