Social media

My love/hate relationship with Facebook

/ edebock / 18 Comments

I have a friend who left Facebook recently (an actual friend, not just an acquaintance who “friended” me), another who has seriously curtailed her friend list by “unfriending” most of the people on it, and a third who is threatening to delete her account.

Why?

What is causing people to abandon what has become by far the world’s most popular social networking site?

Negativity! Plain and simple.

In the past year, I’ve literally seen friendships torn apart on Facebook! That’s largely due to the fact that we in Alberta have been through two very divisive elections in the past seven months; a provincial one in May followed by a national one in October. It’s long been said that there are certain subjects that ought not to be discussed in public and politics is one of them. After what I’ve seen on Facebook in the past year, I’d have to agree! Even amongst people with similar views, opinions vary. In face to face discussion, emotion often takes over and people say things that might be better left unsaid. When they’re sitting alone at their keyboard, some people seem to have no filter at all!

With the elections over, I had hoped that Facebook would return to the more peaceful place that it once was; a place where people shared what was actually happening in their own lives, but I have been sadly disappointed. Controversy seems to be the main course these days with topics like our new Canadian government’s pledge to bring 25 000 Syrian refugees into the country and Alberta’s controversial farm safety bill taking centre stage.

Perhaps it’s only here in redneck Alberta that Facebook has become a forum for speaking out in this manner. One of the reasons that I will not join my friends who are choosing to jump ship is that I have, amongst my 365 Facebook friends, 103 who live outside Canada. They represent 16 different countries or world areas such as Hong Kong, Macau and Saipan and I don’t see any of them posting the kind of angry, negative hoopla that has become the norm for many users here.

There are many things that I really like about Facebook. I’ve used it to reconnect with several people from my past including my best friend from high school, a Norwegian exchange student who shared our home for almost a year in the late 1980s and a second cousin who lived with us for awhile when she was a toddler and I was a teen. It allows me to live vicariously through the words and photos of a former student who lives in Paris and a fellow teacher from our days in China who has retired to DaLat, Vietnam. At any one time, I might be found using the chat feature to converse with my nephew in Red Deer, my daughter in Calgary, a friend in Tokyo and a group of local ladies from my church. Even my 7-year-old grandson has recently started using his Mom’s Facebook to chat with Gram and I’m tickled to discover that he’s already as literate as some of my much older friends!

I miss the days when my News Feed was filled with photos and status updates written in their own words by my friends. Now it seems that I have to scroll through reams of reposted news articles, opinion pieces and absolute trivia to find those few nuggets. As a result, I have decided to reclaim my News Feed!

How, you ask?

It’s not easy. In fact, I’m finding that cleaning up Facebook and keeping it that way is a lot like housework. The job is never done! Every time I see that one of my friends has reposted something, I go to the little v in the upper right hand corner of that post and select “Hide all from…” in the pull down menu. At first, I just hid media sites that I didn’t consider to be legitimate news sources and a few other sites that I found objectionable, but recently I’ve become much more ruthless. I already read the world, national and local news on several sites of my own choosing every day. I don’t need to see the news on Facebook where I’ll only find the articles that support other people’s points of view, so I have started blocking every single news source, mainstream or otherwise. Though some of the thousands of memes that are shared on Facebook are entertaining, I’m tired of seeing my News Feed filled with them too, so I block the source of every one of those as well. If you’re my Facebook friend and you repost something that was written by another friend of yours that I don’t know personally, there’s every likelihood that I’ll block that person too. I realize that by doing all this, I will probably miss a few things that I might have enjoyed seeing, but I’m actually seeing a lot more of what I actually want to see and taking a lot less time to do it.

There are things I dislike about Facebook that I can’t change including the growing amount of advertising that now appears in the main column of the News Feed instead of in the margins where I could more easily ignore it. I do recognize, however, that these ads are what pays for this free site,  which now boasts more than 1.5 billion users worldwide, and keep the myth that Facebook is planning to start charging subscription fees from becoming fact.

There are numerous articles on the internet listing common sense rules of etiquette for Facebook use, but here are a few of my own that I try to hold myself to:

  • Speak the truth. That includes researching a subject and making sure that I have my facts straight before I comment. It may also include refuting those things that I know are false. The endless reposting of false or seriously outdated information is one of the things that drives me crazy about Facebook.
  • Within the confines of being truthful, seek to bless and encourage.
  • Never say something to or about someone on Facebook that I wouldn’t say to their face.
  • As Kenny Rogers sings, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away and know when to run.” In other words, know when to leave the conversation. I don’t always have to have the last word.

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Image: guardianlv.com

 

A little truth and a little common sense please!

/ edebock / 6 Comments

When our daughter was suffering from leukemia in the early 1980s, we were told that if we simply boiled up some pine needles and fed her the resulting tea, she would be well. That was just one of many crazy cures that we were told about, so I expected to be inundated with similar tales when I was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. At first, I was pleasantly surprised not to be told about some magical potion or miracle fruit at every turn, but lately I’ve come to the end of my patience with all the nonsense being circulated through social media!

It absolutely astounds me how many cockamamie stories circulate on Facebook and are reposted by seemingly intelligent people who don’t bother to check the facts first. It’s so easy to do! Just plug a few key words into Snopes.com or TruthorFiction.com and voila! There you have it; the research, the facts, the truth!

These days, it’s the crazy cancer prevention and cancer cure stories that really burn me. Yesterday it was baking soda that would save my life! Really? If it was that easy, do you think there would still be thousands of people dying of cancer every day? According to Cancer Research UK, more than one person dies of cancer every four minutes in the UK alone! Would that be happening if the answer was sitting on the shelf in almost everyone’s kitchen? I don’t think so! With all the time and money that goes into medical research, does anyone really think that the cure for cancer is going to be found floating around on Facebook? Let’s use a little common sense!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. YouTube videos and Facebook posts are most certainly not scientific evidence! Where are the clinical trials? Where are the published research papers? If only people would consider the source before choosing to repost something. If it doesn’t come from the Mayo Clinic or another reputable medical institution of that ilk, it probably isn’t true.

Of course, that brings me to my all time most loathed myth, the idea that governments, pharmaceutical companies and even charities are colluding to hide the cure for cancer because they make so much money from existing treatments. How can anyone actually believe that? There are so many ways to debunk that argument that I hardly know where to begin. First of all, it simply doesn’t make sense that pharmaceutical companies would want to suppress a potential cure. Finding a highly effective therapy would guarantee huge worldwide sales. Secondly, why wouldn’t doctors, who often prescribe less expensive generic drugs, use cheap treatments if they were shown to be effective in clinical trials? And then there’s perhaps the most obvious argument; cancer touches everyone. Even politicians, doctors and pharmaceutical executives get cancer. Their loved ones and colleagues die too. They are not exempt! Would they really withhold treatment from their own spouses, parents or children if they knew they could save their lives? Again, I think not!

Perhaps before reposting or passing on an unsubstantiated, too good to be true, miracle cure a person should ask themselves, what if one desperate cancer patient chooses to abandon conventional treatment and try this instead and what if it doesn’t work? Do I want to be responsible for that? Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, had the same cancer that I have. He chose to ignore his doctors’ advice and sought out alternative treatments instead. By the time he discovered that they didn’t work and turned back to the doctors for help, it was too late. He was a highly intelligent man with enough money to be able to access the best of treatments available anywhere in the world and he might be alive today if he’d used a little common sense!

There ends my rant!

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Too many trolls!

/ edebock / 2 Comments

IMG_0564I’ve discovered a way to save myself a lot of time and aggravation!

For the past few years, I’ve read the news online. I rarely turn on the TV and gone are the days of having a newspaper delivered to the door each morning. The news can be depressing enough, but recently I’ve developed the habit of scrolling down past the end of an article and reading through the comment thread that’s often found there. That’s where my real aggravation begins. I love a good, well thought out debate with arguments on both sides of an issue but that’s seldom what I find. Instead, these threads tend to be filled with ridiculous and radical statements or worse yet, personal insults. I was beginning to think that the world must be filled with stupid people! Then I realized that some of them are trolls.

Like the mythical creature lurking under a bridge and waiting to gobble up the Three Billy Goats Gruff, they hide behind their keyboards and wreak havoc on unsuspecting internet users. By definition, an internet troll is “a person who sows discord on the internet starting arguments or upsetting people by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.” Or, as someone else put it in a somewhat more indelicate manner, “being a prick on the internet simply because it’s the internet and, hey, you can be!” Clearly people are willing to say all sorts of things online that they would never say to a person’s face.

Reading about the tentative agreement reached yesterday in the BC teachers strike is a case in point. Obviously, in a province where labour disputes seem to be the norm and where students have been out of school for several weeks, heightened emotions are to be expected. As I read the comments following one of the articles, I wasn’t surprised to see mudslinging directed at both the government and the teachers union. I was a little more uncomfortable with the nasty comments directed at the teachers themselves, probably because I’ve been in their shoes, but I was also glad to see many supportive ones. In no time, however, the discussion deteriorated into individuals hurling insults at one another. The trolls had done their dirty work, stirring up dissention then sitting back and watching people come apart at the seams! Why would I waste my time reading that? In the future, I won’t. I’m determined to break the habit of scrolling down and looking at the comment threads!

Internet trolls don’t limit themselves to news pages. Blogs and other social media aren’t immune. In fact, I’m aware of one popular blogger who is, in my opinion, a troll himself. He writes controversial and sometimes inflammatory posts, then watches the comments fly! He doesn’t moderate them or even comment on them. He just lets his readers chew into one another. I can only guess that he finds this entertaining but I’ve stopped reading his blog.

I have a Facebook friend who, sometimes inadvertently, starts the greatest online discussions. The topics are often controversial and thought provoking but the moment a troll interjects or the conversation moves toward insults and personal attacks, she has the good sense to remove the entire thread. I so appreciate that! The internet is a great place for us to flex our intellectual muscles and engage in stimulating conversation, but sadly there are those who delight in ruining it for the rest of us.

My only question now is, what will I do with all the time I redeem by not reading this trash?

The Facebook conundrum

/ edebock / 14 Comments

 

facebook-thumbs-guardian-expressImage: guardianlv.com

 

This morning, Ruth, at Life in the 50’s and beyond, published a post entitled Facebook Be Gone! in which she announced that she had recently deactivated her Facebook account. She cited privacy concerns and the amount of time that she found herself spending on Facebook instead of doing other things as her two primary reasons for making this decision.

Later in the day, I noticed that Leanne, at Leanne Cole Photography, had also written about social media, including Facebook. Her post has generated quite a bit of discussion.

All of this led me to write a post of my own weighing in on the the pros and cons of Facebook!

I joined Facebook late in 2007 not long before we left to spend a year teaching English in Japan. My daughter had been telling me for some time that it was something I needed to do but I’d been dragging my feet. Finally, she set up an account for me, not telling me about it until it was a fait accompli! She was right. Facebook proved to be a marvelous way to keep in touch with people back home while we were away and since returning to Canada, it’s allowed us to maintain many of the relationships that we built while we were there.

It was while we were in Japan that I used Facebook to reconnect with several people from my past including my best friend from high school, a Norwegian exchange student who shared our home for almost a year in the late 1980s and a nephew who had disappeared from our lives for several years after leaving home as a young teenager.

There are a number of things that frustrate me about Facebook but most of my exasperation is not with the website itself. It’s with the people who use it! I might be stepping on toes here but it amazes me how many seemingly intelligent people repost all sorts of myths and tall tales without checking on their validity first. It’s so easy to do using sites like snopes.com or truthorfiction.com.

I can’t help wondering about the lives of people who post what they make for supper every night. If my life was that boring, I’m sure I’d go out and do something completely audacious just to have something more interesting to write about! On the other hand, I’ve collected quite a few good recipes thanks to the people who post those.

I love the status updates that one friend writes about the crazy neighbours who live above her. I know they’re driving her around the bend but her descriptions of their antics are very entertaining! I don’t, however, need to know what happens in anyone’s bedroom other than my own!

Some of the things that people say online absolutely amaze me. Hiding behind the anonymity of their keyboards instead of talking face to face, some are downright rude. Whether intentionally or not, our “almost daughter” Chrissy, is great at initiating fascinating discussions on Facebook but, more than once, I’ve seen her and others like her remove whole conversations because they’ve degenerated into name calling and personal attacks.

Facebook has changed it’s appearance several times over the years that I’ve been using it and for the life of me, I can’t usually see why. Like everyone else, I’m frustrated when that happens and I complain but I soon get used to the new look and carry on. I suspect that the changes often have something to do with making the advertising more noticeable but if that’s the case, I don’t think it’s working very well. I, for one, rarely notice the ads at all! I do recognize, however, that they’re what pays for this free site and keep the myth that Facebook is planning to start charging subscription fees from becoming fact.

Can I live without Facebook? Yes. I had to for the five months that we were in China because it’s blocked there. Would I, like Ruth, choose to live without it? Definitely not! Used wisely, it’s a great communication tool.

Ruth is right when she speaks of the lure of Facebook and complains about the amount of time it eats up. It can definitely be a distraction and a time waster. I know I spend more time checking it than I ought to but I enjoy scrolling through my news feed several times a day looking for bits of real news. I also think it’s a fabulous way to share photos and, because I’ve linked my blog to Facebook, it also brings me readers.

Perhaps it’s greatest value to me at this point, however, is the way that it’s enabled our extended family to carry on a running conversation about the needs and care of my very elderly parents. Using the chat feature, we’ve been able to include nineteen family members scattered across North America in an ongoing discussion about life and death issues. It has been an invaluable tool in helping us come to some very important decisions as well as keeping everyone in the family informed about day to day issues.

So, in spite of the frustrations and the time that’s sometimes wasted, I give Facebook a giant thumbs up!

What about you? What’s your opinion of Facebook