[zmitri]

I quit using Facebook about 3-4 years ago while I was still in university. Extremely interesting experience.. people I used to be "friends" with got angry at me, people who I had friendly relationships with stopped communicating with me almost immediately, and I no longer received any invitations to any type of social events (http://www.thewrongbox.ca/videos/iamfacebook). At first it was a little lonely, but it made me realize who my real friends were, and we interacted in more meaningful ways-- I also had more time to pursue other hobbies. I still do not have Facebook and I think my life is better for it.

I like this article, and not with a "like" button.

PS. I still use IM, and twitter like a notepad/thoughtstream (although I don't really promote it to friends).

[sudont]

Same experience here, as soon as I dropped out of facebook, I was immediately blacklisted in every social circle that used it, even if the primary mode of communication was texting/email.

Some op-ed considered dropping out of facebook as a radically anti-social act, and I'd have to agree: you're not considering the group's views on communication, and you're forcing them into a personal world. When the entire social circle uses facebook as a communication platform, it's pretty pompous to expect it to use what a single person wants. This is my argument boiled down: expecting a group of people to conform to a single person's views is rude, and the delusion that the one person is so important that everyone else will conform is anti-social.

The majority opinion on HN seems to be that this isn't, oddly enough. The last time I stated my experience it seemed to piss a lot of people off, and there was a knee-jerk reaction that "true friends will work around it." Maybe, but weak connections are important as well, and since facebook is the place for weak-connection friends, defiantly not using it seems off and a little anti-social.

Another argument was that interaction existed before facebook, so not using it is fine. That's dancing around the point: facebook is the current defacto standard of social communication, not participating it is seen as aggravating to the other party, not that it destroys communication completely. Try telling your friends that you'll only interact with them in orkut. Or, for the Gen X'rs here, that you're dropping your phone, and you expect them to say "hi, how's the job" through post mail and in-person visits. There's a series of fall backs here that's reversed for the average hacker. The hacker sees facebook as personal, and email/phone public. The average person sees facebook as a public place, and email/phone as a personal channel.

[nollidge]

> The hacker sees facebook as personal, and email/phone public. The average person sees facebook as a public place, and email/phone as a personal channel.

Upvoted just for this. Not sure if it's true or not, but it's a provocative thought.

[Estragon]

Sorry, I don't understand how email could be seen as public, let alone the phone. (Except in as much as they're not secure channels, but neither is facebook.)

Could someone explain what this means?

[holygoat]

I think the poster means that for the average person Facebook is the channel you maintain for people you know publicly (i.e., weak social interactions) to contact you, and email/phone is for your inner circle.

For some of us it's the other way around: email and phone is how people we don't know well contact us, reserving Facebook and Twitter for closer interactions.

[apotheon]

There's nothing antisocial about assessing your use of a service and deciding its benefits are less significant than its costs.

[sudont]

Cost/value whatever. I'm talking about other people's perceptions of you, which aren't logical. This is the anti-social behavior i'm talking about: you're right, the world's crazy.

"If one person calls you a donkey, ignore him; if five people call you a donkey, buy a saddle"

[apotheon]

I make it a point to hold in higher esteem the opinion of someone I personally know to have his or her head screwed on straight than a mob of virtual social butterflies who don't even know my girlfriend's name.

When she calls me a donkey, I'll get fitted for a saddle. When vampyrlust317 and fifty of his/her Facebook "friends" do so, I'll probably ignore it.

[sudont]

Um, the close friends (people I knew for four+ years) are the people who stopped talking to me after I dropped off of facebook. It was generally a "why aren't you back on facebook" for several months, and then they just stopped responding to texts and emails.

[apotheon]

Wow.

Seriously, you need a better class of friends. Are you seriously telling me that people won't talk to you in person because you aren't on Facebook?

What the hell is wrong with people?

[baguasquirrel]

It is antisocial to forsake speaking with your friends. Speaking directly is a medium of communication, as is Facebook. You can argue about the cost/benefits of each, and claim your way is the better one, and this would constitute a lack of empathy, a lack of sympathy, or both.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't claim to have been much better.

And FWIW, I've observed the same effect for quitting WoW. Once I did, a whole class of friends stopped talking to me.

[apotheon]

If someone told me he was getting rid of his cellphone because it was costing him too much money, time, whatever, I wouldn't leap to the conclusion that he's just snubbing his friends. If you would, I think you have some antisocial issues of your own.

> And FWIW, I've observed the same effect for quitting WoW. Once I did, a whole class of friends stopped talking to me.

They're jackasses if that's really the reason they stopped talking to you -- unless WoW is all you had in common with them, in which case I don't understand your problem. I find it difficult to believe you're honestly defending that kind of behavior, if they were supposedly real (not just gaming) friends.

[Estragon]

For what it's worth, I dropped off facebook a bit over two years ago, and didn't notice any impact on my social life.

[lotusleaf1987]

I had the same experience. I got Facebook in 2005, it was useful for keeping in contact with people in your dorm/class (you could search by dorms/classes then), other people you had recently met, and getting invitations to events. Then your list starts to bloat up with people you really only spoke with once for a few minutes in a class or at a party, you can't deny then or else you're seen as a dick and you're probably going to run into that person several more times so it will just be awkward. Then they let in the high schools and that diminishes its usefulness to me, then they opened it up to everyone with further diminished its usefulness. The longer I actually had a FB account, the less I used it and the less I appreciated it.

Once I graduated college, I deleted everyone that I felt like was only an acquaintance. Once I got a job, the bloat began again. How do you deny a friend request to someone you work with?

Now... I can't stand Facebook. There is no use for me in having friends, coworkers, and relatives in one space unless I'm at a wedding or funeral. Facebook also puts all the burden of responsibility on the user to segregate their friends into 'groups' which is by no means as easy as it should be.

I now feel like just deleting it. I hardly ever check it anymore unless I get a message from someone.

Like you said, I prefer to email or call someone.