[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?

[sudont]

Yes: minus a former roommate, a girl who quit facebook herself, and somebody I worked with.

People at work are suspicious when they find out I'm not on facebook, and try to cajole me into joining.

[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.