Re:Everything's broken and nobody's upset
by nullc on Wednesday September 26, 2012 @02:53PM
(#4577320)
My moves since I was a teenager were, by distance— 150mi, 10mi, 2mi, 3mi, 2mi, 400mi, 800mi, 2400mi. My nearest family member (other than my partner) lives 2500 miles away. Perhaps when you're a bit older you'll know that such condescension usually just makes you look silly? :P
Facebook is not endowed with some unique magical distance busting power. Telephone, Email, IM, public websites, and postal mail all work over long distances just as well.
Re:Everything's broken and nobody's upset
by eli_gottlieb on Thursday September 27, 2012 @08:23PM
(#4583678)
Facebook is not endowed with some unique magical distance busting power. Telephone, Email, IM, public websites, and postal mail all work over long distances just as well.
No, what Facebook does have is broadcasting capabilities. Rather than going through 13 tedious phone calls, I can post one status update. Unlike email, I don't have to specifically include or exclude various relations from the list of people I'm writing to. It contains its own IM service (though my fiancee and I use Skype together). It's far faster than postal mail (like everything else electronic). It costs far less than a personal website with forum software running.
It's a local optimum. Not supremely perfect, not magical, but good at what it does.
How many times in your life have you moved house to somewhere far away? What you wrote here makes it sound like it probably wasn't very much.
My whole family uses Facebook for keeping up with people we don't live near anymore. I use it for keeping up with college friends whom I don't live near anymore (moving across the state will do that, let alone moving halfway across the world).
You might ask, why am I keeping up with college friends? The answer is: because I'm 23, so they're still a large fraction of all the friends I have.
As I recall, there was a rather frightening New York Times article once posted to HN on how even decades after college, most people still haven't made that many new friends to replace their friends from adolescence.
Scary stuff, hence: Facebook.