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Yes and same here. I like seeing people's kids. I post pics of my kids. I like hearing when people had something interesting for lunch. I absolutely jumped on FB yesterday after the earthquake. Luckily, no one I knew was injured, so there were lots of funny comments and jokes. Gave me a chuckle in the middle of the workday. Yeah, I block a lot of things I'm not interested in and I'm sure I've been blocked, too. But there are a lot of things I DO care about, even if they are silly or mundane to others.
I don't have an account, but if I did I would never, ever post photos of my children.
I don't have an account, but if I did I would never, ever post photos of my children.
Good for you, although I can't imagine why not. I have friends and family far and wide, and it's now the major form of communication between myself and my friends and family abroad. They love seeing pictures of my family, and I enjoy posting them. If someone wants to download a grainy picture of a spec in the distance wearing a boy scout uniform, then all power to them.
Good for you, although I can't imagine why not. I have friends and family far and wide, and it's now the major form of communication between myself and my friends and family abroad. They love seeing pictures of my family, and I enjoy posting them. If someone wants to download a grainy picture of a spec in the distance wearing a boy scout uniform, then all power to them.
Exactly.
FB keeps me still involved in a lot of lives. All the kids who grew up with mine are now grown people, some married, a few with kids, I adore seeing what wonderful adults they have become. I have a large family and this is the best way to stay in each other lives. Old high school friends, old college friends, work friends. I think FB is fantastic.
If you think (or your FB) is all drama and psychos, you may want to take a good long look at your life and the circle you associate with.
No, I don't think FB is all drama and psychos. There are many wonderful people who use it; however, it takes only one bad apple to spoil the bunch. Remember, too, that FB is a corporation that makes its money by selling your personal information. Data collectors like pipl and spokeo, among many others, get a lot of their information from social media, and any keyboard cowboy with a few bucks can have access. (Don't believe me? Go look for youself.) Yes, it's possible to "delete" your listings, but it takes a lot of time and effort to keep one step ahead of them, and once something is posted to the web, it's never possible to remove it completely. The more I learn the more I regret my past naivete. My IT pro spouse, who is hardly an alarmist, is similarly-concerned and fond of saying, "Security through obscurity is neither." He's just seen too much crap in his career. The web is the new wild, wild, west. Tread carefully.
Last edited by formercalifornian; 08-25-2011 at 07:57 AM..
No, I don't think FB is all drama and psychos. There are many wonderful people who use it; however, it takes only one bad apple to spoil the bunch. Remember, too, that FB is a corporation that makes its money by selling your personal information. Data collectors like pipl and spokeo, among many others, get a lot of their information from social media, and any keyboard cowboy with a few bucks can have access. (Don't believe me? Go look for youself.) Yes, it's possible to "delete" your listings, but it takes a lot of time and effort to keep one step ahead of them, and once something is posted to the web, it's never possible to remove it completely. The more I learn the more I regret my past naivete. My IT pro spouse, who is hardly an alarmist, is similarly-concerned and fond of saying, "Security through obscurity is neither." He's just seen too much crap in his career. The web is the new wild, wild, west. Tread carefully.
I don't disagree, I'm just also not an idiot. I have never posted words nor pictures I would regret ever. My boss and a lot of my colleagues are my FB friends.
If it is going to be a career killer for me that I hate Brendan and Rachel on Big Brother, well I guess I need a new career. Also, don't judge me, Big Brother is one of my guilty pleasures.
I suppose I've gone a little beyond the scope of this thread, which started out about bullying on the web. Frankly, the least of my concerns is the bullying aspect of social media, although I agree that it's terrible. My worries now center on issues of privacy. When I hear people say that privacy matters only to people who have something to hide, as if those of us who seek privacy must be criminals, it makes me wonder if the whole damned world has lost its collective mind.
Last edited by formercalifornian; 08-25-2011 at 08:34 AM..
It's her perogative to do what she feels she needs to; but it all seems just a little weird to me that she looked these kids up on Facebook and made a judgement about their behavior and who they are based on nothing more than some Facebook posts. Again, her choice to do what she feels is right, but is she now going to somehow verify that every picture she takes isn't of a bully?
Yes, it strikes me as strange, too. Is she cyber-stalking the kids on her list to see what they are saying to each other? Doesn't the school hire the photographer for senior pictures? What right does she have to get in touch personally with the students if they have not personally hired her? She seems like a strange bird...
I think social media sites like FB provide a false impression of intimacy, which subtly encourages users to reveal more than is prudent. I also think young people in particular have been completely inured to invasive corporations that make obscene amounts of money off their personal revelations, but even the older among us are vulnerable. Western culture no longer seems to value the separation of public and private life, nor does it appear to recognize that it has lost something very precious as the information age enters maturity.
Many years ago, I remember sitting down to scan through the channels and coming across a Spring Break episode involving shaving cream and young people in various stages of undress prancing about on a stage in front of a thousand thoroughly-inebriated peers. I wasn't much older than them, but I was horrified that they seemingly had little concern about the long-term consequences of their choice to be filmed in that state. Although I don't consider myself a prude, I felt very uncomfortable -- no, make that dirty -- bearing witness to their disgrace at the hands of MTV. I cancelled cable the very next day and got rid of the television shortly thereafter. A few years more than a decade later, and we have people of all ages broadcasting the most intimate details of their daily lives to anybody who wants a view, and in some cases it makes that long-ago MTV episode look quaint by comparison.
But even for those who keep things less, uh, revealing, I think the rise of social media discourages us from investing time in maintaining the kind of relationships that really sustain us through the years. We are a nation obsessed with shallow relationships and apparently little inclination to nurture of deep ones. And as someone who has been on a C-D bender for the last three days, I fully-acknowledge that I struggle with this, too. I want very much to unplug for good, but it's nearly impossible these days. Meanwhile, the laundry piles up, the garden goes without watering, and the refrigerator turns into a science experiment. My real life friends' calls go unanswered.
Back to the topic at hand, ultimately I find it ironic that the photographer at the center of this controversy used FB and her blog to out these girls for their bad behavior. (I know she hasn't revealed their names, but Indiana is a small town, so it will be public eventually.) I find that distasteful but, unfortunately, par for the course.
Yes, she's behaving in a pretty ugly way herself considering she's an adult and they are children.
My point is that she discussed the situation on FB and her blog, rather than keeping to private correspondence with the parties involved. I suspect that she never intended for it to blow up this way, but that's the way the web works. She cannot put a lid on the situation now that it's out there, and it's very likely that the girls' names will be revealed eventually. And no matter how badly they behaved, I don't believe they deserve what's coming if and when that happens.
I agree. She's made herself judge and jury and no one has seen the evidence.
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