Fuck Facebook in its hateful face, and its hateful book

We dont let our kids have Tik Tok either, which worked out to be the best thing in the end as there were warnings from their school about the impact of various videos that had been going around their year groups. Also their friends just seem to fall out on any SM they are on and seem to use them to pick on people.

It won't pass. Amongst the many problems with the bill is that it's been put forward by people who fundamentally misunderstand what encryption is and how it works, because they think a "strong law enforcement" posture to appeal to their voters is the be-all and end-all. 

Anyway, I preferred it when the "meta" of something was a way to describe the current state of online PvP. Give me a Hearthstone meta where everyone's using draw fatigue decks, or a Hot Wheels Unleashed meta where the best times are set in cars with 5 boosts that can skip half the track.

The Facebook meta must be deleting your Facebook account... because the only winning move is not to play.

(Groan. Sorry, I came up with it on the toilet and had to post it somewhere)

You're so impressive.

dogbot Cheers man. I feel I should have looked into this before he started using it, but to be fair it's only been a few weeks. he wasn't bothered before that. I'll dig into it.

Facebook was great in the early days when it was basically a wordy Instagram.

Once people started preaching politics at each other and posting endless links rather than holiday photos and mildly amusing statuses it became a dumpster fire.

The sheer volume of advertising also makes it a chore.

Not everyone. I don't. I've got this place, Linkedin (why I'm not sure) and thats it. I can't be the only one. 

Yeah, same. Lost about 30% of the contacts, but meh.

I'd really like to ditch WhatsApp and Facebook but I have too many people who like who that's really the only way I hear from them regularly (mostly older people). I severely minimize how much I'm on Facebook at least.

Pretty sure this whole thing is because Zuckerberg has seen the writing on the wall re: FB, it's on the way out, but this "Metaverse" bullshit seems deeply delusional/desperate, and also just incredibly tacky/tasteless in terms of visual design, which is somewhat surprising given the untold billions he has.

The man keeps his barbeque sauce with his books

I'm old too... but I've taken it a step further and alienated everyone I used to know, so I don't even need to use SMS.

I did have Facebook years ago, but binned it. Sure there were people I kept in touch with on there who I was worried I might lose touch with, but I figured if they wanted to keep in touch, they would. They didn't. That showed me just what relationships were actually important. I've not missed the thing at all. 

Yeah that's pretty profoundly unsurprising, I guess. The sad thing is, money can buy taste, but I suppose only if you're not a completely declasse wanker who thinks he's smarter than everyone else.

Just speaking personally, I don't think that's how it works. A lot of people, especially people who aren't neurotypical or who have social anxiety or other issues, have difficulty staying in touch, and this is further exacerbated by generational differences. If you cut off the modes of communication they do use, it doesn't mean they didn't consider the relationship important, it means they aren't able to communicate via the very limited and narrow set of modes of communication you've decided to allow.

Like, if I decided I was never going to answer the landline again, nor write letters, nor go to Scotland, that would have completely stopped communication with my grandma when she was alive. She was realistically capable of working out computers or SMS or the like. That's an extreme example, but with younger people it's not actually dissimilar. If you decide that literally the only way to talk to you, say, is mobile phone calls or some app that literally no-one else uses, you're basically intentionally cutting yourself off. Claiming "they weren't actually important" is just retroactively coming up with a justification for your behaviour/decisions and the results thereof. It's not the truth or a fact.

Speaking personally as someone who is great in person, rude and obnoxious on forums (soz), and finds SMS and text chat in general pretty stressful (but just about doable), and phone calls (except, weirdly, business phone calls) extremely stressful, I know I've lost contact with people I cared about (or massively reduced contact) because it was so difficult to use the modes they wanted to use. One of my favourite people ever I only stayed in touch with because he made a massive effort to stay in touch with me - it wasn't that I didn't care or didn't feel it was important, but I just couldn't handle personal emails at that time (still can't - again business is fine). And I'm a superficially normal-seeming person IRL, like no-one would think "Oh that guy is so stressed by personal email that he just doesn't answer them".

Obviously YMMV and maybe everyone you lost touch with didn't give two fucks about you, but unless they were the most normal bunch of normies on the planet (and didn't just seem that way externally), but it seems more likely to me that some people did care, but couldn't handle the approach you took for whatever reason. I guess it's because I've seen it from the inside, but I can't really judge people who lose contact, or assume they just don't care. I can care deeply and still find it very difficult to stay in touch.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk, I guess is what i'm supposed to say now lol.

Data from TNG is actually more human acting that mark