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facebook confessional

hover

hover

Oct 4, 2008
4,833
1,276
Massachusetts
#1
I am not saying I'm not guilty of this from time to time, but what is the attraction for some people on Facebook to just be..soo.....cathartic? I'm not talking vaguebooking (thought that drives me NUTS), but real personal, private laundry... At times it's outright embarrassing. At least that's how I feel for them... I use that dumb site to network, post for gigs, rehearsals, & post funny vids or shout useless crap to the void, but others I know frequently use it like some soul-baring forum...

hmm, kinda like some on here.... eh-humm.....

But why is this? Is it a desperate cry for attention? Is it the fear that you are just not all that interesting and want to throw it out there for sympathy or commiseration, or for the lulz? I mean you're baring your soul for your entire friend-list, and if you're not careful, the entire site. That's nuts.

The less I understand of the allure of the voyeurism of reality-type t.v. has me totally scratching my head on this one. My youngest Sister is a text book example of this, to be honest, and I had to de-friend her, and constantly un-tag photos...it's just crazy...time for an intervention I think.

Sorry, just dealt with it yet again, and it still amazes me what some people will admit there what they probably wouldn't admit to family face-to-face.
 
#6
Pilgrim, you sound like a miserable old guy. You can get out of facebook what you put into it. I have friends all over the world, and it makes it super easy to keep in touch with them, as well as for anyone to find me. I live in CA and regularly talk to people in New Zealand, Switzerland, Iceland, Thailand, and all over the US just to start. It's also good for keeping in touch with family and sharing photos. Also, it's really easy to follow businesses, people, etc, and get all your information in one place.

If you're going to be a general dumbass about facebook and not use a filter on what you type, sure, it will come back to bite you in the butt and it won't do you any good.

I think it's a generational gap thing, honestly. For some reason 99.9% of people I know in real life are on facebook, utilizing it to some degree at least once a week. We grew up with it, and can exploit it to it's maximum potential.

I don't really care about the 'big brother is watching' argument either, because I don't put anything that would put me/my job/my family in a bad spot on there, either. So who cares.
 
#8
I don't agree with Facebook being dumb or designed for deception. Is it essential? Not at all. Is it a desirable service? Heck yes.

This said, I'm 22 and extremely unfamiliar with the way privacy evolved, even for people just five years younger than me. The term "Facebook confessional" coins it very well, although I think it is just the designated tool for people who would act foolishly elsewhere if it wasn't there.
 
#10
My profile is set to private. Almost everything is set to friends only. I made sure the I turned off the feature of getting found on Facebook from search engines. I limit my friends to people I actually still would want to or still have a face to conversation with. Having 300+ friends on Facebook that have access to personal information is a grave error for anyone.

With all of that being said. It's a great tool for what I use it for. Keep in touch with close friends, family, and finding people.

Now the band page I play for and help admin the Facebook site is completely not locked down but my full name is not on the page. The more friends the more people get the show invites.
 
#11
Some people definitely need a self-filter, but for the most part, all I see on facebook is people telling me what they had for lunch, raging about crap drivers, and youtube videos.


I personally like to liven things up, and have made my facebook wall sort-of my scratchbook for my struggles with major depressive disorder. It is not for attention, and not for sympathy. It is for the edification of the general public, and a ventilation space for me. There is a tremendous amount of FUD, misinformation, and misconceptions out there regarding depression, and I am doing my best to change it, even if only a teeny bit.
 
#13
hover said:
what is the attraction for some people on Facebook to just be..soo.....cathartic?
Click to expand...
People want a place to express themselves. There's a lot of stuff that would be difficult or embarrassing to talk about in person (mostly because very few people want to listen to it), so it's easy to type it into FB. I think the same thing about blogs. Someone has a bunch of opinions about politics and what is wrong with the world, which no one wants to hear. So they write a blog and imagine that people are reading it.
 
#15
While I tend to agree about some people over-sharing parts of their personal lives, it's easy enough to block those posts. I find FB to be extremely helpful in keeping regular contact with extended family and friends scattered across the country and around the world. Through FB, I've been able to reconnect with friends that I had lost touch with years ago and had no idea how to find. FB was also responsible for me knowing about Phalex's Christmas underwear.
 
#19
Jim Nazium said:
People want a place to express themselves. There's a lot of stuff that would be difficult or embarrassing to talk about in person (mostly because very few people want to listen to it), so it's easy to type it into FB. I think the same thing about blogs. Someone has a bunch of opinions about politics and what is wrong with the world, which no one wants to hear. So they write a blog and imagine that people are reading it.
Click to expand...

Now this, I agree with. Some people just need to let it out. For example, I made a tumblr mostly for my amateur photography. I love for people to see it and to be interested in my work but I won't be crushed it it doesn't get a certain amount of attention because that's not why I'm doing it. I get the feeling that they are quite a few people like that all over Facebook. People that just need to vent or want to say something to an audience, not in desperation, but in hopes that someone will enjoy, learn, or simply read their posts though their not so narcissistic as to believe that they need the attention.

That said, I'm right with you hover, for a good bit of your post. I do like and enjoy Facebook as it's benefits to me far outweigh any sort of negatives I see but I'd guess that 70% of my friendslist is made of up vaguebooking (thank you so much for finding a term for this, it also annoys and baffles me to no end), self-absorbed, over-sharing, people who want to believe that they have to combined wisdom of Confucius and Aristotle. That pretty sad considering I have less than 250 friends, lol. Most of the time it's kind of funny so it doesn't bother me to much but I always feel this little twinge of sympathy because in most cases, I really don't think they see the potential that this has to hurt themselves and possibly those around them. It very much looks like a cry for attention in a lot of instances but it's far from my place to say whether those cries are truthful or just a bunch of people who seem to have a considerable amount of growing up to do. I do, however, have my suspicions.
 
#20
I use facebook for keeping in contact with people. Simple as. Friends of mine who have moved away, a few bands we've repeatedly gigged with who don't live here and general contacts who are useful to the band.

I follow the, "don't post anything you wouldn't want your mother/grandmother to see" filter on everything. This means theres no talk about drugs, casual sex or other such things on my wall. I don't see it as unsafe at all.
 

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