March 15, 2009
Matt Labash Is Down on Facebook
In contrast to the mild reservations Justin expressed recently in a post, Weekly Standard columnist Matt Labash is fiercely anti-Facebook.
But there is one promise I've made to myself. And that is that no matter how long I live, no matter how much pressure is exerted, no matter how socially isolated I become, I will never, ever join Facebook, the omnipresent online social-networking site that like so many things that have menaced our country (the Unabomber, Love Story, David Gergen) came to us from Harvard but has now worked its insidious hooks into every crevice of society.For the five or six Amish shut-ins who may not yet have heard of this scourge (your tenacious ignorance is to be admired, and I'd immediately friend you if I was into Facebook and you had electricity), Facebook is an online community where colleagues, friends, long-lost acquaintances, friends of friends or long-lost acquaintances, and perfect strangers find and "friend" each other based on their real or perceived affinity. ...
I save my scorn for Twit-ter, which I recently broke down and joined for a professional group (the only use I have for it).
But I'm peeved at Facebook for changing its home page to ape Twitter.
I just joined Facebook last week. It's obviously a sign of the apocalypse. I find that it can be useful in so far as one has real friends to put on it, and not facebook only "friends." Also, I think it's important not to put anything on it that you wouldn't write on a postcard.
Posted by: Will at March 16, 2009 2:06 PM"Also, I think it's important not to put anything on it that you wouldn't write on a postcard."
Like the woman who put that she was bored in her headline while at work and was fired shortly after.
I recently got on Facebook myself and find it to be less of a predator zone than MySpace. Unlike today, many 30 somethings didn't have cell phones and email to keep in touch with classmates so it's a great tool to get reaquainted with people.