Facebook

I hope I'm doing this right. I never saw the topic for this on Snarkfest 2.0 so please forgive me if I talk about some of the same stuff!

What are your favourite groups? Do you enjoy poking people? Do you randomly friend people you barely knew from elementary school just to get a higher friend count? Do you find explaining to people why Facebook is awesome is really, really hard? "It's a social network! You...make friends and and....join groups!"

How do you feel about the relatively new "News Feed and Mini-Feeds"? And lastly, are you completely addicted to Facebook?

I wouldn't say I'm completely adicted, but I wouldn't be surprised if I got there one day. I just signed up the day before yesterday, and the site freaks me out a little. There's scarily Orwellian about being able to know what freakin' EVERYONE you've friended is doing. And therein lies its devious appeal. I can't look away. . .

Yeah, it can be kind of Orwellian at times, especially with the News Feed. I disabled some of the settings, so my friends can't see everything that I do (mainly just wall posts and comments on photos are not seen, because I don't think people care what I am writing on my friends walls)
Having said that, some aspects of the News Feed are fun, like seeing who your friends add as a friend, or what groups they join. I've found a lot of great groups like that, for example, the "Jane Austen Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations of Love" group.

It's surprisingly easy to get addicted, you start joining groups and posting to them, and writing on walls and you've suddenly wasted two hours! Not that I know from experience, of course...

I just like to keep up with my friends. I'm in a bunch of groups and have a lot of random friends (especially sorority sisters from other schools), but I mostly only log in to see what's going down and invite folks to parties.

If it weren't for facebook, I would have never organized my local athiest/agnostic club at my university. God bless facebook! :D

I love my job! We're reviewing applications right now for student workers, and we decided to cruise their facebooks for information. We've already rejected* the guy who's into emo (we don't want to have to listen to that in the office) and the girl that seems to be very in to drinking and partying. We also found out that one of our applicants is a "sperm doner recruiter."

* While it's fun to pretend, we wouldn't actually decide who to hire based on facebook. We had already made a decision based on applications, resumes and cover letters, so the interview is a bit of a formality.

Okay I finally caved and joined Facebook. And my GOD, is it addicting. Most of my friends are all from work so far though. Do we have like a Snarkfest group thing on there at all? Because that would be SWEET. That way I can feed my addiction to this place while still at work.

I've only been a member for a few weeks now, but yes, I am TOTALLY addicted. I join groups mostly just so my little thing on the side says I'm a member, but I rarely post to them. I do not enjoy poking people (dirty!). I do not randomly friend people I knew from elementary school to get a higher friend count, but I DID randomly add a bunch of girls I used to dance with -- but because I wanted to catch up, not to up my friends! Hee. It's difficult to explain to MySpace addicts why Facebook>MySpace. I could use tips on that. I LOVE the mini-feed and news feeds, although I don't feel the news feed is as intuitive as it could be. It doesn't show all the wall posts that your friends make, just the wall posts that people who are your friends post on other people who are your friends' walls, right?

Um, YAY for run-on paragraphs?

Well, for me personally, most MySpaces are an abomination to my eyes and ears. 90% of the time, if I want to read something, I have to highlight the text because of the atrocious pictures people use for the background.

And the music thing can get very very annoying.

Agreed!

I have a friend (a web designer, shockingly) who actually prefers the MySpace interface and thinks that Facebook has too much text on its pages and is difficult to navigate. As you may well guess, I had no appropriate response to that, being far too dumbfounded to piece one together.

Plus also? MySpace pages take FOREVER to load. Probably because of all the shit on them. Even the Home page is riddled with advertisements.

I saw a group the other day called "Give Facebook music" or something and I wanted to go post "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" on their wall.

Hey Kai, right...but not all wall posts are shown anyway because of privacy and network settings. Sometimes people (like me!) can set their privacy settings so the wall posts they make are never shown. But as long as someone is in your network and writing on the wall of someone else in your network, even if you aren't their friend, you can usually view their "wall-to-wall" conversations, if you are so inclined!

EvilBearHunter, I think I know the group you mean..."Facebook Needs Music!!!"...horrifying. The automatic music is the reason I hate myspace!

Anyone have a favourite group? I am quite partial to "Jane Austen Has Given Me Unrealistic Expectations of Love"...its funny cause its true.

I love the classic "I tried to ford the river, but my oxen fucking died" group. (I'm also in a spinoff group, "I tried to paddle through the mists of time, but a fucking manatee hit my canoe.")

I've seen plenty of groups along the lines of "Don't let Facebook become Myspace!" and plenty of people threaten to jump ship (especially before they changed the security options and Facebook became open to pretty much everyone). I don't think the music people are a majority.

I am partial to the "Disney Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Love" group myself. Well, that and "I will go out of my way to step on the slightly crunchy leaf" one, because I do that ALL THE TIME. Crunchy leaves bring me much joy.

I'm in the crunchy leaf group! ...Soon to be in the Disney group as well, hee.

ETA: Why are there a billion groups with the same/similar names? That's silly and does not make my day.

I'm sure part of it is from way back when you needed a school email to join, and the groups were associated with the schools, instead of being global. I'm not sure, as I haven't been on Facebook in ages. Actually, that's not true, I signed in today to accept an invitation to a breast cancer awareness group, and write on a friend's wall because today's her birthday. But before that, it had been months. I'm also in a "I Tried to Ford the River, but my Fucking Oxen Died" group. And a "Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good... and Want To Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too" group. And a "Heterosexual Meat-Eaters" group. And the "anti-mayonnaise Brigade". Basically, I'm a group whore. Wow, I just looked, and I'm in 66 groups.

Oooh, Oregon Trail! I remember when we played that on the Apple IIc machines at school. The monitors were not even black and white back then-- they were green and black.

I'm way to addicted to the damn site. I have bunches of people from my classes. I also have my summer boss which is silly. He friended me well before they opened facebook up to everyone. He used his school email address from 10 years ago. I rag on him for being creepy. I'm like, one of his 3 friends.

I really like the pictures thing. I love going through peoples' albums. I have a bunch of friends abroad this semester, they have such interesting albums. I can only hope my abroad album will be equally entertaining.

Is there a way I can change my name? I want to put in my whole last name.

Go to "My Account." Scroll down a bit, you'll find it.

The hell it does. I don't like the automatic music on Myspace either, especially when I'm listening to music while going online. That's not to say I wouldn't put music on my Myspace profile, because in all honesty I probably would.

Back on topic... I joined Facebook not too long ago. Not quite as addictive as Myspace is but it can be a pleasant diversion.

I just added my crush to my friends. When I saw him last week, he hugged me twice, which made me all happy, and I finally remembered to search for him on the site. I don't ever log into the site unless I get some email notice, but now, I log in to look at his pictures. It's really pathetic.

Hey, who you calling pathetic?

Damn, I think we are in the same group! Hah! Snarkfesters think alike. I love that game. The best thing is killing the buffalos. Why are they soo easy to kill as compare to birds and rabbits?

I think at one point, I tried to see how fast it was to kill my whole party off.

So it's not just me, then? Whew! That's a relief!