Not really true. The network effect. You get to be isolated and lose your friends if you don't.
<Not really true. The network effect. You get to be isolated and lose your friends if you don't.
I may be misunderstanding your point (if so, my apologies), but if someone is a friend, an actual, real friend, not an online acquaintance, there are many, many ways to stay in touch and maintain those relationships that have nothing to do with online social media sites.
I'd posit that if someone is unwilling to interact with you because you don't wish to use the same social media site, they're not really your "friend," just an acquaintance on (or a shill for) some social media site(s).
Then those folks aren't your friends. Feel free to disagree (as I'm sure you do), but if such folks actually gave a rat's ass about you, they'd use one or more of the dozen or so other ways to stay in touch should you leave such social media sites.
I can't (and wouldn't pretend to) speak for anyone else, but I want to be around folks who want to be around me. And not all of those.
tl;dr: If someone's "friendship" is contingent on the use of a particular website/app, then they're not really your friend.
I think you live in some kind of bubble where people have more choices than they do. You also forget that your friends would stop visiting you if they couldn't drive, even if bus, train and walking were available. That's just the way things are. People have lives and limitations, and that doesn't make the connections or exchanges between them any less valuable to any party.
Yes, we do disagree. But there's no reason to attack me for not agreeing with you.
I don't know you and don't care about you (except in a general, wishing all sentient life a positive experience, sense), nor do I care about your friends or family.
I related my experience and the views those experiences have engendered in me.
There was no intent to be any of the things you ascribe to me and it appears that you take offense to my point of view. Fair enough.
And since I want to be around folks who want to be around me and you're clearly not one of those, we can avoid the dishonesty of false pleasantries (which, it seems, you've already decided to do) and get on with our lives.
I wish you a good day and much success in whatever endeavours you undertake.
To put it another way, I have family I would lose touch with if I left Facebook. They're still family and I would still prefer to know if they graduated college or got cancer or died. Same with friends-who-aren't-close.
If we're diving to /. depth here (as you seem to want to do), I'll go with it.
There (see above). FTFY.
/. == slashdot.org noted in the last decade for shallow discussion, infighting and poor quality discourse.
Hence the "FTFY."
Not attempting to continue our disagreement, just clarifying my earlier post.
Have a good day!
If you care so much about each other, then why would you lose your friendship if you dropped facebook?
Not even kidding, the postal service still works quite efficiently, and email is very useful.
Part of the problem here may be generational definitions. Perhaps I am wrong, but I think the definition of "friend" has changed quite a bit since the pre-web days.
All of these technologies are tools. If your friends are really friends, you'll use whatever tools you need, and even if significant time passes, you'll still be friends when you finally connect on the other side.
Look, no one forces any of us to use the obnoxious websites. For many of them, there are alternatives (email), and for the worst offenders, abstaining is easy, and the only option (social media).
The old-school internet and web will always be available, ready to use, and superior in almost every way to the dumpster fire of modern websites.
Did anyone else experience a palpable feeling of euphoria when visiting OP's website? For me, it was blissful and uncanny. Here is a webpage with design pulled non-ironically straight out of 1999, which also somehow feels like it was made in 1999. Not a hipster's prerequisite "indie-web" presence, not an emulation or demonstration built in a framework -- a simple, flat-file webpage that speaks to the defense of the original web, and in the native tongue.
Perhaps we should encourage web3. After all, it is by virtue of this crisis that so many more people are realizing why even web 2.0 was mostly just a commercialization of web, and has changed us for the worse.