Facebook – a gift and a pain

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Facebook_logo-6I’ve been on Facebook over a year. There are tons of things I don’t get, like why stuff isn’t in post date order. I can scroll down my page and old posts are mixed with new which I have seen repeatedly. Enough already.

I get amused by the targeted marketing too. That sweater I just looked at is staring at me on the right. (I had to google some items when I read Fifty Shades of Gray and was terrified that these…ummm…appliances would haunt me forever!)

Then there is the posting dilemma. WordPress automatically posts my blogs (thank you WP!). I know how to share from other people. Posting a picture from my phone has me stymied.

That’s not the right word. I sort of know how to do it but strange things happen. I’m sure it’s all ID-10-T error. (I know — so hard to believe!)

To start this story you need to know we had eight inches of snow last Friday night. (Yeah, bah humbug!) It interfered with my Saturday Starbucks run which was delayed for three hours (yes, I was on life support!)

To help recovery I got two drinks. Wahoo! I save that for very special days. (I can hear you judging me. Hush!)

A message box popped into my head. It said wouldn’t it be humorous to post this so my local friends can laugh at my coffee addiction. (I always like to make people laugh – one way or the other).

I took a photo on my phone of my Starbucks cup or so I thought.

I have this new phone that’s much smarter than me. I did something wonky and it was a video, mostly of the blank countertop. However…I didn’t realize it at the time. (Note to self – when you see a start arrow on a photo, it’s a video, duh!)

I click the Facebook icon on my camera. Up comes the place where you write a message. I can type 120 words a minute on my computer but I do two words a minute on my phone and sometimes (most times) they are misspelled. After painfully typing eleven words, I sent it off.

I went to my Facebook page and there was the stupid blank video. Delete, delete, delete.

Try again. Painful typing. Poof, everything disappears before I can click send. Where did it go? Checked FB. No photo or message. Nothing. Nowhere. It’s in lost message heaven. (Some of my best work is there.)

Not doing that again. My friends will have to laugh at someone else.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, I do enjoy Facebook. I can connect with family that I don’t routinely see. I love tracking what they are into.

One of my nieces I rarely see. That side of the family is distant and I never really got to know her. We connect through Facebook. She is a wonderful person who is going to move to Florida as soon as her obligations allow. She has the ‘pet gene’ that runs rampant in my gene pool (but only one dog so we must work on that – we are a multiple pet family. No one does onesies!). It’s been wonderful to have this chance to connect.

ZuckerbergFor that I thank Mark Zuckerberg (although if that was my last name I would change it).

I wonder if there is an advantage to coming last in any alphabetical line up?

35 thoughts on “Facebook – a gift and a pain”

  1. FB confuses me…I forgot my password and they won’t let me change it…it’s very annoying since, I can’t LIKE anyone on it therefore my site sits stagnant. I’m ready to chuck the whole cyber thing in…I feel very inept across the board.
    You’re doing so well…look at all your LIKES and comments. You have really succeeded on your site. Happy for you..

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  3. I have my Blog linked to FB but I choose to send it over depending on the post … since some posts might be about FB! 🙂 Click on your settings to see.

    For the most part, I enjoy FB. The not-so-nice ppl have been unfriended and I hide the ones who post every 6 seconds!

    MJ

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  5. There are so many things I don’t understand–on Facebook and WordPress, my laptop and my camera. I don’t bother to think about why they do things the way they do. I just want to know how to make them work for me. I need to make a list. Then I need to find someone who knows the answers.

    I enjoy Facebook, especially when I need a little break. Some people post interesting things, and I scroll through until I find them. It’s like wandering around at a cocktail party. Not every conversation is to your taste.

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  6. There isn’t a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t think about pulling the plug on The Book of Face. I have no family members by choice and all that is there is cat and horse stuff. I have 17 friends and they are very nice people and they are about all I can manage. Facebook feels just like being a kid again and not being picked till last to play on a team… it just has that feel to me. So I use it to stay connected to Tinykittens.. 🙂 I AM going to go kill the connection for WP posting my blog posts to FB! I don’t use my real name.

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  7. Heard FB and Instagram both went down a bit last night – people must have been dialing 911 hyperventilating and feeling faint/depressed/lost. (insert giggles)
    FB has a place, I guess, and all the family pix/connections are convenient, but it really can suck you in and eat up time. And then there’s the worry over not being able to fix stuff and keep up with all the constant changes FB does which means you have to keep an eye on settings.
    I’m impressed with all you who can keep up with it all!

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  8. I’ve had a long-running hate-hate relationship with FB, having deleted my account more than once. I reluctantly went back online with them in order to stay electronically connected to various family members or friends, but other than that, I have pretty much utter disdain and contempt for the whole kit and caboodle. I deplore the constant bombardment of advertisements, especially those that are supposedly tailored to match my specific interests (so wrong, so wrong, so wrong and definitely not alright, alright, alright). I am supremely bored with all the “shocking” and “you won’t believe” headlines and links to non-stories disguised as stories that are really all about mining personal information and tricking people into clicking on advertisements.

    Thankfully, I finally learned how to turn off all those “please come play this game with me” posts, as well as those “don’t you want to be friends with this person whom you’ve never in any way had any sort of connection with” posts. I religiously avoid putting any real personal information on FB, choosing instead to use it more as a touchstone by liking other people’s posts or linking to various quotes or memes that resonate with me.

    Also, I’ve intentionally severed the link to have my WPress blog posts automatically linked to FB, primarily because I don’t blog under my real name, and also because none of my family is linked to my blog. My blog and FB don’t belong in the same space, even though at one time I did consider linking them. Ultimately, I chose to keep them separated.

    Ironically, my blog is probably a more realistic reflection of who I am than my FB page could be considered, even though FB is published under my given name. FB has become a means to an end; a way of letting family know I’m still breathing, and a way of seeing their photos and blips about what is happening in their lives, and a way of sharing a laugh or a bit of inspiration with friends and family. It’s the shortcut version of sending a note or making a phone call. In many ways, I think of FB as similar to television, in that I don’t love the platform at all, but it serves a purpose, and therefore, is still part of my life. And I always have the option of pulling the plug.

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    • What you say is so true. Sometimes I don’t visit for several days. Then I find I didn’t miss that much. Like you I like to keep connected to family. Originally I connected WP and FB to increase readership. It did that for sure but since people know who I am, I keep my blog non controversial!

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  9. “There are tons of things I don’t get, like why stuff isn’t in post date order. I can scroll down my page and old posts are mixed with new which I have seen repeatedly. Enough already.”

    There should be a toggle switch next to “news feed” that allows you to switch to “most recent” . . . but the default setting is “top stories.”

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  10. Although my blog posts automatically go to FB, I’m not a big fan or user. I don’t really care about what someone had for dinner or that they’re currently at a certain place. It all seems a little too narcissistic to me, but to each his own.
    I hope you’re not getting buried in snow, Kate.

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    • I think we all have that love-hate thing going on. If I “like” a dog picture of a friend, I get tons of dog pictures from places I’m not familiar with. I have learned not to click on what may seem like an interesting story because there is not story. It’s an advertisement.

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  13. I’ve tried to like FB, but after three experiences with it over the years I can definitely say that it’s not for me. The platform is too restrictive– and I cannot, for the life of me, care about people who I used to know. I find that keeping a blog about who I am now is more interesting than living in my past via FB. That being said, I realize that everyone’s experiences on that platform vary– and for some lucky people it’s a good thing. Glad that you can enjoy it so much.

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