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if you don't have a FB account, why not?


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In light of the recent facebook threads... is there anyone else who's never had a FB account? If so, why did you never sign up?

 

I initially didn't join FB because I disliked the interface, but the real reason is that DH is a privacy freak. If he even knew I posted here (anonymously) he'd be upset, and would be furious if I ever posted pictures of the kids (which I haven't). He urged me not to do FB and never has had an account himself.... same for our kids.

 

To me it seems like a voluntary 1984, where you post your thoughts and share your private life for all to see. I know there are various privacy settings but it still gives me the creeps.

 

I also am not sure whom I'd "friend." If I friended my parents I'd have to be very careful whom else I friended because they can be judgmental, and it just seemed like a recipe for drama and hurt feelings.

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I've never been even remotely interested in FB. At first it struck me as something a bit gimmicky, something my teenage nieces were into in a big way. Now, I've heard so many bad things about it, I'm glad I never bothered. I'm also a very private person, I'm choosy about who I have in my life, and who I share my thoughts and feelings with.

 

DH has never been interested in FB either, and at the moment I don't like the idea of the kids getting into it - the oldest is only 12 - when they're older, of course, it's up to them.

 

So no, you're not alone, I think we're quite rare though ;).

 

Best wishes

 

Cassy

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I've never been even remotely interested in FB. At first it struck me as something a bit gimmicky, something my teenage nieces were into in a big way. Now, I've heard so many bad things about it, I'm glad I never bothered. I'm also a very private person, I'm choosy about who I have in my life, and who I share my thoughts and feelings with.

 

So no, you're not alone, I think we're quite rare though ;).

 

Best wishes

 

Cassy

 

No FB here. I don't need it.

My real friends keep in touch other ways - irl, email and phone calls.

Besides, I spend more than enough time in cyber space here! ;)

 

These two perfectly sum up my reasons for not being on Facebook!

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1) Not interested, in general.

2) Privacy concerns as expressed by current users.

3) Drama. All of the IRL people I know who are on facebook are always talking about some drama going on there. :001_rolleyes:

4) If facebook is going to sell my personal information, I want a cut of the action. :tongue_smilie:

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Partly privacy concerns, but mostly I'm just not that interested in the minutiae of other people's lives. I tend to be pretty quiet and reserved in real life and don't have an overpowering need to share my daily trivia online. I'd rather communicate in other ways. It's not like I'm hiding out from family and friends; I just don't have any desire to interact in that particular way.

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In light of the recent facebook threads... is there anyone else who's never had a FB account? If so, why did you never sign up?

 

I initially didn't join FB because I disliked the interface, but the real reason is that DH is a privacy freak. If he even knew I posted here (anonymously) he'd be upset, and would be furious if I ever posted pictures of the kids (which I haven't). He urged me not to do FB and never has had an account himself.... same for our kids.

 

To me it seems like a voluntary 1984, where you post your thoughts and share your private life for all to see. I know there are various privacy settings but it still gives me the creeps.

 

I also am not sure whom I'd "friend." If I friended my parents I'd have to be very careful whom else I friended because they can be judgmental, and it just seemed like a recipe for drama and hurt feelings.

I've never had a Facebook account. I figure that anyone I want to talk to or who wants to find me can do so. I don't like the massive privacy violation that is a hallmark of Facebook.

 

I don't like that Facebook has replaced real relationships. We have relatives that should want to see us or our kids, but they only interact at all on Facebook and call it good. Facebook is "faux community".

 

I don't care that you "Just ate the most awesome chocolate chip cookie EVER". If you wouldn't call me and tell me about it, don't put it on Facebook.

 

I don't think I'm a good candidate.

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My life is VERY FULL and I don't need to add anything else to it, besides I feel it's too intimate.

 

I do have an online life, but I consider it a pseudo-life. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but that's the only way I can explain it. Facebook seems invasive, and I'm not interested in living quite that loudly.

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I don't use FB because I don't see the point of it.

 

Why do I need to know every intimate part of your day?

Do I need to know that you are sitting down to eat at Applebee's?

Do I need to know that your left toe nail is hurting and to prove it, here is a picture?

 

No interest in having people from high school find me. None. In fact, there are several people I hope never to hear from again.

 

:lol: and :iagree:

 

I have a hard enough time limiting my computer time, I don't need to add another time sucker into my life.

:iagree::iagree::iagree: No FB for me...

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It was bad enough in high school when this girl came out of nowhere and told me she went to elementary school (I had no clue who she was) and proceeded to tell me things like, "You had no friends! You had such weird clothes!" that just were bizarre. I have this idea that facebook is like that times 10. Although my husband found his nephew's facebook page the other day and .... was rather surprised.

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No FB here, but I enjoy seeing other friends' family photos with my 20yo dd on her account.

 

Two years ago, a friend emailed to say, "I just wanted to let you know we were changing our email address. You are my only friend who is not on FB, and I wanted to make sure we kept in touch."

 

It made my day. :) She had 300 friends on FB, but took the time to make a personal connection with me. All the more reason NOT to get on FB. :lol:

 

If forced, I would likely use the "personal messages" section of FB if needed--which seems to be just like an email inbox.

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At first I thought I had to have a Facebook account, but my parents discourageed it from the beginning. I didn't realize what a big waste of time it was, why spend hours on FB when I could be doing something so much more productive?? I have little time as it is and then I wanted to add something that would strip more of my time? I now realize that all it does is cause problems, I stay in contact with my friends via email, texting, phone calls, and even the mail. So no I don't need a FB, it is just another time waster that I don't want to deal with.

 

My friends are always so shocked when I tell them this and why!!:lol:

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Maybe I shouldn't post, because I do technically have an account. It is for my business and I've found that I actually cannot run it successfully without one. every networking event, training course, or relevant article is posted there. When I've tried to not use it, I've ended up missing out on clients and events.

 

However for personal reasons, I find it to be useless. I am very private and don't want everyone knowing my every move. I also prefer more intimate conversations and relationships, compared to the superficial ones that are cultivated online.

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I'm too old to have signed up for facebook when I was a college student/young adult (it didn't exist yet), but I'm too young to have children who use it (and need monitoring).

 

Now that the facebook/blog thing has exploded, I'm just not interested in participating. If we're really friends then I already know the important things in your life. If we're only aquaintances, then I really don't want to know that much about you. I have privacy concerns with facebook. I have concerns with the oversharing and narcissism it encourages. I'm just not interested in interacting with people that way.

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All of the above reasons!! The thought of joining sends chills up my spine!:tongue_smilie:

 

Sometimes I check out some friends when my girls are on fb, and they tell me they'll start up my own account - I get positively panicked at the thought! My youngest thinks it's funny & started to type in my name etc - I just about hyperventilated!!:D

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1) Not interested, in general.

2) Privacy concerns as expressed by current users.

3) Drama. All of the IRL people I know who are on facebook are always talking about some drama going on there. :001_rolleyes:

4) If facebook is going to sell my personal information, I want a cut of the action. :tongue_smilie:

:iagree:Well said!

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Nobody in my immediate family has one. Kids are too young anyway, and DH and I do not like the privacy issues and the needless drama.

 

I do wish that the rest of my closer family was not so drawn into it all. I never find out what is going on until the last second because they only post pertinent info on facebook and then whine about me not having an account when I ask them for details. This includes things like wedding arrangements for the bridal party-which I was a part of, baby/bridal showers, which I was supposed to help plan etc. Sometimes I am frustrated about being left out, but not enough that I can overlook the obvious issues with it and join!:lol:

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and loving it! Seriously, when the whole FB bubble hit a couple of years ago and I would tell people I wasn't on it, the response I consistently heard was, "It's such a time suck, be glad you aren't doing it.". That's pretty telling to me.

 

My dh does have anaccount for his business, but only uses it for promoting his business and declares that he wouldn't be on otherwise. He uses quite infrequently. He is quite a tech savvy guy, but says he finds the privacy policy intentionally confusing.

 

I find the whole FB thing quite interesting. Willing volunteering your personal info and in effect giving a company the rights to any content you post is an interesting precedent. I think the road we are headed down WRT technology is probably inevitable, but I think there will always be a group of people who opt out.

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In light of the recent facebook threads... is there anyone else who's never had a FB account? If so, why did you never sign up?

 

No Facebook for me, thankyouverymuch. I don't have privacy concerns about it (I'm easily identifiable via my online existence, and that's fine with me). I'm just flat out not interested. In fact, if someone offered to pay me to join FB, I wouldn't.

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(1) I have a vindictive ex and he doesn't need to know anything about me whatsoever. (Even the fact that I'm still alive is more than he needs to think about.)

 

(2) My life isn't that interesting. An occasional email is more than enough to keep people up to date.

 

(3) Even with all the privacy settings, I still would not feel comfortable sharing anything that I wouldn't want broadcast via CNN. I just don't trust the idea that I have "control" over who sees what. (And if I do want anything broadcast CNN-style, all I have to do is tell my mom, and she'll handle the rest:glare:.)

 

(4) I have an addictive personality and I'd never get anything done if I had the ability to fool around on facebook all day.

 

On the other hand, I sometimes feel like being on facebook would be a good idea. I could check on friends who are on facebook. Also, I'm a member of a specialized kid-oriented group that gets together from time to time. They all know each other much better than I do, because they have a facebook page for common stuff, as well as links to their individual pages. It would be nice to share stuff about my kids with people who have something in common with us.

 

I have a friend who is coming for Christmas with his 5yo daughter, who is the same age as my kids. We haven't seen his kid in 3 years. The last photo I have of her is from 2 years ago. It would be nice to be able to show my girls photos of the little girl they are about to share their Christmas with. This friend has asked me to be his friend on facebook, but I"m not really on fb (I opened a dummy account at one point to check someone out, but I don't use it).

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I have never been on FB and I never will. I am a very private person by nature and I just don't like the idea of putting myself or my family out there like that. I get really annoyed when someone knows something about me that I didn't tell them. It just really seems like an invasion of privacy to me.

 

I think that we have lost our respect for privacy to a great degree in this technological world. I believe it goes both ways. Because of private information being so readily available on the WWW many have come to not respect their own privacy as well as the privacy of others.

 

If there is something going on in my life that I need to share with someone I do so personally. I inform them one on one. I have no need or desire to share anything about me or mine to the masses.

 

I hope by my taking a stand on the issue it will also help to discourage my kids from jumping on the FB train. Hopefully by seeing that mom is against it, (and why) they will be more careful in regards to their decisions to use it or not someday when they're old enough to decide for themselves.

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Just as a random sample of what I do on facebook -- in the last few minutes I posted a NY Times editorial (and received several thoughtful comments on it), had a discussion about the concept of memes (whether Dawkins should get credit for the idea when all he did was coin the term), watched a cool dance video that my daughter posted last night (which she likely would have forgotten to show me this morning), and was informed that it takes 12 crushed candy canes to make one cup (which may save me a lot of grief later today). I also discovered that my neighbor has laryngitis, so she likely won't be calling anyone on the phone today. (Do I care of the entire world knows this? Not really. It's not really of any importance to anyone else, so why would they bother to search this out?)

 

It's all about picking the right friends. There's nothing inherently wrong with facebook, unless you have dull friends.

 

As far as privacy goes, I see people post way more on this forum that can be accessed by *anyone* than I ever see of a personal nature on facebook. The general rule of thumb on the internet is not to post anything that you wouldn't want the entire world to read, even if you think you're protected by a username that is not your own.

 

So I do think facebook is useful, if you use it right. Most of the arguments I've seen on this thread seem to think things about facebook that aren't true (at least not anymore). The only argument for staying off facebook is the time issue, but that can be controlled, if you aren't silly about it.

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Just as a random sample of what I do on facebook -- in the last few minutes I posted a NY Times editorial (and received several thoughtful comments on it), had a discussion about the concept of memes (whether Dawkins should get credit for the idea when all he did was coin the term), watched a cool dance video that my daughter posted last night (which she likely would have forgotten to show me this morning), and was informed that it takes 12 crushed candy canes to make one cup (which may save me a lot of grief later today). I also discovered that my neighbor has laryngitis, so she likely won't be calling anyone on the phone today. (Do I care of the entire world knows this? Not really. It's not really of any importance to anyone else, so why would they bother to search this out?)

 

It's all about picking the right friends. There's nothing inherently wrong with facebook, unless you have dull friends.

 

As far as privacy goes, I see people post way more on this forum that can be accessed by *anyone* than I ever see of a personal nature on facebook. The general rule of thumb on the internet is not to post anything that you wouldn't want the entire world to read, even if you think you're protected by a username that is not your own.

 

So I do think facebook is useful, if you use it right. Most of the arguments I've seen on this thread seem to think things about facebook that aren't true (at least not anymore). The only argument for staying off facebook is the time issue, but that can be controlled, if you aren't silly about it.

 

I learned all of this just by reading this post!;)

 

I doubt that most, if not any of us, deny that it is very fun and helpful for many people. And I hope you realize that we can have fun with exciting friends and find out helpful information even without facebook.

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As far as privacy goes, I see people post way more on this forum that can be accessed by *anyone* than I ever see of a personal nature on facebook.

 

True-- but I doubt any of the facebook holdouts in this thread are the ones spilling their guts on message boards.

 

The general rule of thumb on the internet is not to post anything that you wouldn't want the entire world to read, even if you think you're protected by a username that is not your own.
'

 

Perhaps, but there is still a huge difference between posting under an anonymous username on a message board, and posting under your real name, with picture, hometown etc. on an SNS site.

 

Yes, my IP (which is only viewable by the mods and admins) can be traced to my general geographical area, but to obtain my name and home address you would need a legal warrant.

 

Of course people can drop hints and life stories that might make them recognizable to people who know them IRL, but again, a huge difference from posting under real name, picture, hometown. I'm generally very careful not to provide too many details that would make people who know me IRL recognize me in the slim chance they'd be reading my posts.

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:iagree::iagree::iagree:

 

( I also don't want the drama of not friending am in-law who is a draining-drama.)

 

And I like not doing what everyone else is...the bride...jumping in and all that.:D

 

1) Not interested, in general.

2) Privacy concerns as expressed by current users.

3) Drama. All of the IRL people I know who are on facebook are always talking about some drama going on there. :001_rolleyes:

4) If facebook is going to sell my personal information, I want a cut of the action. :tongue_smilie:

 

No interest in having people from high school find me. None. In fact, there are several people I hope never to hear from again.

 

No FB here. I don't need it.

My real friends keep in touch other ways - irl, email and phone calls.

Besides, I spend more than enough time in cyber space here! ;)

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No FB here. I don't need it.

My real friends keep in touch other ways - irl, email and phone calls.

Besides, I spend more than enough time in cyber space here! ;)

 

This is us. No interest whatsoever. The more I read about how electronics are reprogramming brains (especially youngsters), the more glad I am that we choose to limit our exposure. I spend enough time on the computer as it is. I want time for other things in life.

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