[flexd]

I have been thinking about it, but around here Facebook is so common it would be weird not to have it.

My friends never send SMS any more, they use Facebook messenger. Nobody asks you for your phone number, they ask to add you on Facebook. Nobody invites anyone to anything without creating a Facebook event.

If I suddenly leave Facebook I am certain I'll also lose out on a lot of social life.

What do you use for instant messages? Do you just use email a lot more?

I really wish some kind of distributed social network could take off the way Facebook has. I do not want anyone to keep my data as much as the next guy, but if you want to be a social person in 2013 (at least here), you kind of need to have a Facebook account.

A guy I met at the start of the semester is a german exchange student. He had to create a Facebook account when he got here because pretty much everything happens on Facebook. Some things do not even have their own website, just a Facebook page.

[sneak]

> Nobody invites anyone to anything without creating a Facebook event.

> If I suddenly leave Facebook I am certain I'll also lose out on a lot of social life.

This. You can't expect people to set up and populate their own mailing lists to notify everybody they want to invite to their birthday party or share news of their engagement.

I hate it too, but the reality is that being off facebook means losing touch with people that you don't have to lose touch with. Very, very few people will make an effort above and beyond the default choice these days (facebook events) to notify/invite you to stuff that involves more than a half-dozen people.

[bcoates]

Before Facebook, there was this thing called "the Grapevine", a decentralized communication network of people who were so intensely interested in everyone else's doings that you couldn't stop them from keeping you up to date about it. I have not, despite my best efforts, been able to unsubscribe from it.

[ChikkaChiChi]

and that "Grapevine" usually resulted in news of your engagement turning into a story about how you helped Maverick engage MIG's over the Bering Strait just in time to save Iceman.

...am I the only one who remembers "The Telephone Game" from pre-school?

[rzt]

One could always maintain a very skeletal Facebook account. No "liked" movies, TV shows, etc., one photo, no bio other than whatever is necessary.

You wouldn't be contributing much to FB's market research efforts, but that's OK; you'll still be able to connect with schoolmates and cousins and get invited to parties.

[flexd]

That might very well work, but part of the problem would be the content others generate about you. Pictures and video of you, mentions of where you have been and so on.

[res0nat0r]

Sounds like the friends you are talking about really don't care about you that much. I wouldn't consider them friends.

[eruditely]

Oh please, let him decide that.