Faceless

Clearly, many people are attracted to Facebook or similar because they believe genuinely but not necessarily correctly that it's an excellent way to keep in touch with friends & relations. "Excellent" because they are told constantly that it is, without question, by people around them and by the web-site's own advertising.



Others are dragooned into it by same friends & relations; perhaps with the idiotic phrase "everyone uses it!". Everyone? Who is this "Everyone"? There are many regular Internet users, including me, who won't touch such web-sites with a barge-pole - or barge-mouse.



How many sit down and think hard about their genuine needs to keep in touch, the options available, and disadvantages or hazards of each option?



I did try Friends Reunited but could not understand how to use it, made no contacts with anyone through it, and had no idea what to write about myself. After a few months of it continually asking for more from me, or trying to sell its peripheral dating-scams, sorry, services, to me, both unsuccessfully, I left it.

Well Written about the stupidity of Facebook.

I too set up an acct. at the request of friends I found it boring and difficult to navigate and deleted it in about 24 hours.

Thank you - of course you are entitled to your views!



I don't know why EP tends to delete paragraphs but it is annoying. Space-saving? I'm going to add double returns here to see if that works.



I realise now your bitterness - being physically & mentally abused by incompetent, cruel teachers will hardly encourage anyone. As for the usefulness or not of what you learnt, I thought the same but in fact I do use basic algebra for practical uses in both my hobbies and my work. I think many are put off maths by being taught topics like this as merely exam-fodder, with little or no reference to the real world.



While the ideal of semi-self-sufficient local communities is attractive, it can't work nowadays in anything more than a very small way. Society generally learnt this when still tribal - as trade etc developed, so did the more complex societies we see now, whatever political beliefs & system they use.



I do agree that much of modern life is extremely shallow - but was that our forefathers really any better? You don't have to watch the X-factor or buy silly fashions - I don't even bother to own a television - but when you think about how people lived even as recently as our grandparents' times you realise their lives were even emptier for they had far less available - good, bad or indifferent.



What on Earth did they find to talk about 100 years ago once they'd mulled over family, household & work? Very little really. Yes, fashion and the pop culture are shallow and shabby, but they always were and without them society would be poorer, not richer, culturally, if only by less choice.



The Khmer Rouge tried something like a basic life-style based on bucolic communes, but their extreme, and extraordinarily cruel, ways failed totally, helped considerably by their total ineptitude.

All right - give us your framework for an effective, fair, just & humane society - or indeed even a dictatorship - that does not involve work.



The comment on people damaging their careers has nothing to do with your apparent wish that no-one should do anything. The sad thing is at least some of those who foolishly post self-destructive material on Facebook actually want worthwhile careers but harm their chances of doing so.





of course many people feel trapped in humdrum work but although you seem to tell us n0-one should do any work you don't give a practical and constructive answer. Yes I know there are others who merely sponge off the State - and many, many more who genuinely want work but can't find it - but is that a satisfactory answer?



How did you learn to read so you could learn to use the Internet & type your nihilist principles here if it wasn't for a succession of workers teaching you the Three Rs?



What happens if you have toothache or a serious illness or injury? Who'd treat you but people paid to do so?



How did you acquire a computer if it wasn't for someone making it, selling it, mending it if it breaks down? And come to that all those involved in the electricity supply, telecomms & IT industries paid to give you the wherewithall to tell us you can't be bothered to work for a living?



Or do you have a job but it's so dead-end & boring you can't stand it? If so find summat else & stop calling the rest of us stupid and "brainwashed" because we earn enough both to look after ourselves AND to enjoy worthwhile hobbies & social lives as a reward.

There was a comment re people damaging their careers, hence I wrote my own comment re wage-slavery.

Errr, OK that's fine if you are one of the very few with independent means, but if you are not then your fun will be very limited if you can't afford it through having no wage.



You also forget, ignore or simply fail to spot that people with careers (rather than dead-end work that so many have to do) find their rewards in more than just the pay.



And as someone who has been redundant, but fortunate that is was for only a few weeks, in some 40 years of work, I take exception to being called "brainwashed" and implicitly not having fun.



I DO have fun - rewarding hobbies that bring wide circles of friends & acquaintances in many trades & professions; literally from dustmen to teachers or doctors.



Many earn more than me, which I admit I envy but know is a product of their own efforts on top of their greater ability which I envy too. They too would regard as rather offensive being called "brainwashed" as it implies being unable to think for themselves, for they have made their own ways in life to the best of their opportunities & abilities. And our "fun" is part of our own rewards for our own endeavours as well as relaxation from work.



Yes, we all moan about our work at times. Yes there are times when it is humdrum or stressful and we yearn for the weekend or the holiday - but I'm damned if I'd want to lose that work because I'd lose those other opportunities.



Besides if I were to be redundant, who the hell is going to look after me? Everyone else in work, through their taxes, that's who; as indeed will happen to some extent when I retire. Any better ideas? No - of course not. If there were better ways for all we'd all be living them.



But remember this - for all your condemning the idea of working for a living, next time you need a doctor or dentist, next time your computer or 'phone line needs repairing, next time you go shopping for food - those services are the result of others who do work, & work hard and for some least, even enjoy it.



As for Facebook, the real subject of this forum, what has that to do with employment, save only to point out that if you are made redundant, or can't / won't find work, how do you pay for the computer and the electricity it consumes?

EP's a very different thing isn't it?



Although it has mutual support / advice / crying-on-shoulder fora, it's an anonymous discussion-group, not a direct self-publicist web-site like Facebook etc.



The nearest I've been to social-network sites was Friends Reunited, at the suggestion of an old school-friend whom I met again by chance. After some months of faffing around in the dark, unable to understand what I was meant to do on it and how, and deleting umpteen automatic ads for itself and for its attached dating-agency, I cancelled it.



AFAIK FR is not a data-harvester like Facebook, but I could be wrong. They didn't obtain anything about me worth selling anyway.



I won't touch FB, Blogs, Twitter etc even if I knew how, but I joined these fora out of general interest, seeing as how they snare so many people, and wondering why.



This arose from hearing about a law-degree student moaning to the Press that the University's principal had reprimanded her for her antisocial behaviour when drunkenly celebrating exams. She'd only posted pictures of her antics on Facebook! I thought one had to be both intelligent and wise to study for a law degree...



The radio news report included an interview with an IT academic who said many people have damaged their career prospects by incautious social-network use.

This may appear twice - my first attempt vanished into some sort of black hole.



I've read these EP fora on Facebook with interest as an observing non-user, wondering why so may seem drawn to it but so many seem now so disillusioned with it. And why so many users have so little concept of personal privacy on line, either.



You can contact your (real) friends by more private means, as I do, & I can't understand why people seem to insist on data-harvesting vanity-sites. I have no need, and indeed refuse, to use Facebook et al, & have no idea how to use them.



E-mails, instant-messaging (which I know nowt about either), telephones and - dare I risk being condemned to try to learn Java & C++ for all eternity for saying so - letters are all valid choices.



No-one forces you to use Facebook nor any indeed any other specific means including e-posts or written letters. If people say "But everyone uses MyFaceTwitBlogebo!" point out that no, not every one does, and invoke the "You're all individuals!" scene from the film "The Life of Brian".