After letting a profile languish for some time, I got pulled onto Facebook by people who insisted upon messaging me via Facebook rather than via email.
I quit and deleted the account, however, when the demands of reciprocity got not only too time consuming, but too transparent and formulaic to participate in without feeling almost ridiculous.
It is tangentially related to a scene from Fight Club-
Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just...
Marla Singer: - instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.
On Facebook, as with many social media sites (including Flickr), people "listen to you" to remind you that you should listen to them. They like your posts and comment on your pictures and send you happy birthdays all to ensure that you feel the obligation to do the same to them.
Life is full of that sort of reciprocity, but never could it be piled onto people with the easy lack of friction that Facebook affords.
The real life equivalent of this for me is Christmas cards.
I never send them, but I receive piles of them every year. It's really not nice of me but I stuff them in the paper bin unless they're from close family or home made and not printed.
When it's mid summer though I tend to drop in on people just to say hi and ask how they're doing, I prefer to do that than to send a Christmas card just because 'it's the social thing to do', I don't feel as though I'm obliged to return the favor and the facebook 'demands of reciprocity' I can do without just as well.
I quit and deleted the account, however, when the demands of reciprocity got not only too time consuming, but too transparent and formulaic to participate in without feeling almost ridiculous.
It is tangentially related to a scene from Fight Club-
Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just...
Marla Singer: - instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.
On Facebook, as with many social media sites (including Flickr), people "listen to you" to remind you that you should listen to them. They like your posts and comment on your pictures and send you happy birthdays all to ensure that you feel the obligation to do the same to them.
Life is full of that sort of reciprocity, but never could it be piled onto people with the easy lack of friction that Facebook affords.