I finally decided to get on Facebook, largely prompted by a Slate article about Facebook holdouts (titled You Have No Friends). It said that not being on Facebook is becoming like not having a mobile phone – an affectation that just makes life more difficult. I’ve also noticed that people only announce events on Facebook now, and I like to know what kinds of events I’m not going to. So I believed it.
I actually held out on the phone thing for a long time as well, and even now I ignore it much of the time, which turns out to be pretty irritating to people. Funny how that wasn’t such a problem with non-mobile phones; if you didn’t answer it, people would just assume you were elsewhere. And there was no way to return the call. Much more civilized.
I’m now going through the standard agonies of incomphehensible friend requests, annoying web-polluting applications and a constant excess of information about everything. And the whole thing is making me feel so used – I’m giving my social graph away to Facebook for free. It’s unfortunate that the social graph could eventually become untraversable if I didn’t use this crap.
