Remember shooting the shit with him about this social network thing he was working on - he was wearing a dressing/smoking gown and drinking from a plastic bottle of vodka... down to earth guy, not above getting blotto with a couple of random brits - and I don't think at that stage even he expected it to go anywhere near as far as it has.
Not sure why I'm telling this tale, other than to illuminate that the guy's a human being, and an entertaining one at that.
Maybe to brag that you've hung out with him? That's not meant to be snarky. It's the same explanation for why people want the autograph of someone famous - to try to convince other people they know high status, powerful people, and by association they are one themselves.
We are often unaware of why we do what we do... or we tell people one reason and keep the real reason to ourselves :-)
Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't.
Experiments in psychology and neuroscience show how little we know ourselves; how we retrospectively justify our decisions to ourselves and others, and how we are experts in self deception. So it's entirely possible that some part of you was driven by the primitive urge to publicly align yourself with high status people, but finding that disagreeable, you then seemlessly deceived yourself with a different purpose, because of course you aren't so egotistical.
Now I'm not saying that that is what happened, and no one can ever know. I am saying it is a pattern of human behaviour.
> Actually thought twice about posting for this precise reason.
That's kind of strange isn't it, when you think about it? I assume you mean that you thought twice about posting - in case people you'll never meet might think you were bragging - instead of thinking about posting your name? That doesn't really seem to make any sense to me. I mean, why should you care what people you don't know, and in all likelihood will never meet, think about you? From a logical stance, it doesn't make any sense. But then we aren't driven by our logical brains. It's been really fascinating for me to learn about this and then to see the walls of my logical reality crumble and realise how much emotion dictates my life and how little we actually know ourselves.
Don't make the mistake that people are a) logical, or b) that you really know yourself (unless you're superhumanly gifted) and your reasons for doing what you do.
Of course I don't expect you to like this post either, since this challenges our assumptions about ourselves at the most fundamental of levels :-)...
Facebook stopped being a fad and became a staple. People who could not fathom using new technology bought a netbook and learned to use it just to find long lost acquaintances and keep in touch with their sons. It's not just chatting, but it's about the core experience: "We are in this together". Photos, silly daily updates and videos make distance less painful.
Perhaps, though I'm not convinced it was for the better. every time I log into Facebook I log off within five minutes wondering why I continue to waste my time with it. Maybe that's just my problem, I don't know.
An RSS reader wouldn't be compelling if you're just subscribed to Buzzfeed, after all.
I keep in contact with my actual friends, but not via FB.
Guess your idea is better, but it's actually kind of fun to de-friend ppl. You should try ;)
so in your logic, because somebody don't use facebook, he/she does not communicate with his/her friends?
wow
He got us here by tricking us with cheap tricks. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfa...
The way I see, he is one of the worst things to happen to the Internet if not the worst, but that's just my opinion.
For a long time facebook tracked people using flash cookies (also called Local Shared Objects) to track people with opinions flawed like your own around various website that are not facebook.
What if they use some more devious tricks now? You might say that you use noscript, adblock or something else, but what about profiling you based information created by you browser. Browser fingerprinting - https://panopticlick.eff.org/ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint
I would rather simply avoid facebook and deal with people without a history of ethical issues.
And now, Mark created a business with thousands of employees, changing how we communicate, how we discover information about the cities we live in.
Give the man some respect. This isn't about his privileged background, but about the perseverance he showed for the last 11 years.