I’ve been pretty vocal about how much I hate Facebook. Honestly, who hasn’t decided they didn’t like one of their friends as much after all the political stuff they post? I mean, what kind of person thinks like that anyway, right? Facebook is almost fully to blame. With the instant posting of news updates, memes, false stories, etc., all types of relationships can end in an instant. And to make is worse, Facebook bombards you with everything your friend does: Joe Shmoe commented on this post, Derpina liked this post, Derp commented on this page. It’s never ending. Even more horrific, is that you can’t control what your friends see you do on Facebook. You have no control over your own activities and content. You used to have the option to unsubscribe from Likes and Comments for each friend. You had to go through your 300+ friends and do it to each one individually, but you had that option. Now, it’s all or nothing. You either see every little thing your friends do on Facebook, or you don’t see anything of theirs on your news feed. Don’t even get me started on the stuff Facebook hides from you because it doesn’t think you are interested in seeing posts from friends you don’t regularly interact with. (Maybe it’s because you will show everyone how I interacted with them, and everyone is tired of seeing my hundreds of likes every day.)
I finally found a friend I had when I was 6 on Facebook. It’s been almost 25 years since I’ve seen or heard from her. Thanks to Facebook telling me everything she commented on, liked, and posted, I discovered what a hateful and bigoted person she grew up to be. Sad thing was, I couldn’t unsubscribe from her likes and comments, nor shares (shares was never an option to unsubscribe from). I made the tough decision to just unsubscribe from her altogether. I didn’t want to unfriend her, because I still wanted to stay in touch, and just not discuss political crap with her. Apparently my political oriented likes and comments on pages I subscribe to, not her, made her decide to unfriend me. There are quite a few people I’m friends with that I’ve learned what type of person they really are, based on their likes, comments, and shares. I’m sure they think the same about me. Even my boyfriend commented about unfriending me because his news feed shows nothing but my likes. I mean really Facebook, the world does not need to know that I liked a photo posted by a page that none of my friends subscribes to. Give ME the option to broadcast my activities to my friends, don’t make it up to them whether or not they see what I do. I should have control over my own activity.
This doesn’t even have to be specifically about political topics either. There’s a couple people on my friends list that post a new selfie every 5 minutes. It’s flipping annoying! Again, it’s an all or nothing subscription. I can’t just hide certain activities. Facebook shows us the stuff we don’t want to see and hides the stuff we do want to see. The ONLY reason I’m still on the craptastic site is because my friends and family are on it, and they refuse to go elsewhere “because no one else is on that site.” No one communicates with each other anymore. It’s all by posting photos and statuses on Facebook. No one calls me to talk to me, and I don’t call them. After moving away from all my friends a couple years ago, the Internet is the only way I can stay a part of their lives. I just wish it wasn’t through Facebook.
