Okay, so I read the article posted on the site, Three Reasons to Hate Facebookand I gotta say, I’m just tired of people whining about Facebook. I’ll agree that the addition of new vocabulary to our everyday speech because of Facebook (“Dude, I poked your girlfriend last night.””That’s a profile pic!””Did you see what I wrote on your graffiti wall?”) is slightly worrisome, but I mean really, it’s just a fad.

Remember back in the day when everyone had a LiveJournal? And your friends would get into fights over something one said about the other in a public entry? And now nobody cares at all? I feel like Facebook is heading in that same direction, especially with the addition of the applications deal. That is probably the one thing that Miss Annalee Newitz and I agree on. But even though applications are annoying, it probably takes about three seconds for me to delete all my requests. Plus, you can hide all those requests anyway.

The fact that one of Newitz’s arguments against Facebook was hinged on her own laziness ASTOUNDS me. She said herself that there are indeed plenty of privacy options that can be used on Facebook to keep all the people she’s slept with from seeing each other, but she’s just too lazy to figure them all out. And then the whole “social conformity” thing? PLEASE! Are we in middle school? Is putting your name in a phone book “conformist”? No. Facebook is practically the same thing. Newitz was upset because her employer was evidently using Facebook as a means of connecting all of their employees in a clean, clear, easy-to-use manner. Oh no! My life has been made easier because of Facebook! Give me a break.

So here’s the three reasons why people who hate Facebook should get over it:

1. It’s a voluntary site; if you hate it, then DON’T USE IT.

2. Privacy options are there for the people who are smart enough to use them. If you’ve got stuff you don’t want other people to see, then get off your lazy butt and hide it.

3. The “conformity” of the site actually makes it a lot easier to use; MySpace’s biggest problem is people covering their pages with useless graphics and crap that slow down your browsing speed. Conformity is not necessarily a bad thing.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

3 thoughts on “Three Reasons Why People Who Hate Facebook Should GET OVER IT

  1. i personally don’t know whether Facebook is good or bad because i’ve never really understood what people gain from it. i truly don’t know what you can with a facebook account apart from seeing people’s pictures. i don’t hate facebook, cause i don’t know it. and i didn’t read this woman’s article because i don’t care about it. i think that writing too much about facebook is probably giving to much attention to it. whether you write articles about why people should hate it or about why you should get a facebook account now is a way of saying that using facebook can dramatically change your life. and that’s the part i don’t like about it or any other product of media. that some people tend to believe that mastering a program or having an ipod or a cellphone makes a real difference. since i don’t ask people to explain to me why they have facebook, it annoys me when they tell me that it is time for me to get an account, and stuff like that.
    i don’t use facebook, i don’t hate it, i really don’t mind people sharing their “privacy”, and i definitely don’t find facebook dangerous in any particular way. so i don’t usually get involved in this sort of discussions. but i realized that you were somehow touched and annoyed by the article you read, and i just wanted to say that maybe we shouldn’t care about it much.

  2. I’m not sure how many of my friends really take advantage of all the privacy options on facebook, but I actively consider it whenever I add someone. Most people don’t need to see every album and every thing about me–i probably have close to 30 people on a limited profile, usually friends of friends who just want to be “facebook friends” but they don’t really know me that well. I would argue that there is one main benefit of facebook that has prevented me from deleting my account–facebook makes it very easy to stay in touch with other people. I remember when I graduated high school, we gave the student body president out parents’ home number so that in 5 years they would have a way to get a hold of us for a reunion. well, that summer facebook took off (summer 2004) and once everyone had an account, I find it much easier to stay in touch with my classmates that I may not have otherwise.

  3. I don’t hate facebook, but i also don’t love it either. I agree that there is no point in sitting there and bitching about how bad facebook is. If you really don’t like it that much, then don’t use it. One of the only reasons I still have my facebook account (which my sister actually started for me) is because it makes it easier to stay in contact with certain people. I must admit that I love perusing the photos albums people make. As far as privacy is concerned, I think that people need to censor what they put up a lot more than they do. Do they realize that maybe putting up a drunken picture of them half-naked isn’t the greatest thing to do? or about how many other people can see it? I think people need to think twice before about what they upload, and who might see it…

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