A comedy of modern manners

[hirez]

Is it just me and/or the noisy mob of people on that there FriendFace, or has it become utterly impossible to keep up with the blasted thing? A screenful seems to be about 45 minutes back in time, which since I can only look at the thing once a day or less, appears broken-as-designed in all relevant respects.

I think I'll blame Twitter. In that FB have aped the UI and the punters have aped the usage model.

Comments

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Not just you. I keep hiding all the quizzes and crap and still it's too much. God know how people with 300+ 'friends' cope.

[incy.livejournal.com]

perhaps people now only have an attention span of 140 characters? :)

i hide people

[theevilchemist.livejournal.com]

I find 10% of the people post more than 1/2 the content, so I hide them. I hide quizzes too. World peace through judicious filtering is my motto. :)
jv

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Not just you.
It used to have a handy "1 line of latest status for everyone" feature, but that's obviously proved too useful and doesn't generat ad revenue.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

In my scholarly opinion, fuck Twitter.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Not just you. I'm seriously considering unfriending everyone on FB who also has an LJ so that I can at least keep up with the people I don't otherwise know what's going on with.

Yeah, I know there's friend groups and stuff but I find myself utterly unable to get FB to work for me, to the point where it makes me feel depressingly stupid.

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

"I find myself utterly unable to get FB to work"

In the sense of navigating it? You're not alone.

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

I can't handle FB or Twitter. It's all I can do to keep up with LJ (and now Dreamwidth), and that's only because I have to filter my reading pages depending on how busy I am.

I don't know how people do it. I think the only way is to go shallow and cover a lot of territory, and I don't think I'm that interested in a one-line update from a thousand people!

Too much of an introvert, even online.

[redcountess]

I must admit I use FB totally differently to how I use LJ, in that I post quiz results etc. but I do try to post some content as well. I second what others have said about filters (although it's a bit of a faff to take people off filters if you do want to start reading again), and also friend lists so you see posts by those you do want to keep up with.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I want to give DW a fair shake because a lot of their early planning was about making it interoperate with other services. LJ is LJ because it's more or less a walled garden (People who go 'This is the internet. I can say what I like and you can't stop me' have utterly missed the point), but that only works when everyone you want to communicate with is also on LJ.

On the other hand, if the current state of FB is what happens when you interop with Twitter, then, um, No Sale.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Sir has an admirable grasp of the facts of the matter.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Quite possibly.

It reads to me like a broken internal monologue.

See, I like to read about the inner (and outer) lives of friends. That's why I keep a(n) LJ in the first place, and (on and off) attempt to emit quality posts about random stuff. Phildo's first law of the internet, etc.

However, the Twitterage? Just, no. It's like one too many people are stuck in a relationship with a controlling partner and have got into the habit of vocalising their doings so as to avoid Raised Voices.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I've got "Meta nostalgia" -- do you remember in the old days, it took so much longer for a new communications technology to get to the "it used to be so much better" stage.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Surely facebook is much more "walled garden" than livejournal. My LJ is trivially findable and readable by everyone. My twitter is similarly open. Facebook on the other hand, most usually presents a "Sign up or fuck off" to the outsider.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

It's back (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=83075432130) :-)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

They must keep a tab or widget open on their desktop all the time.

I haven't got the right brain chemistry to do Continuous Partial Attention like that.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Perhaps so in that respect, but the random bolt-ons seem to be able to allow aggregation and posting from all sorts of sources.

The history of LJ has largely been 'If we didn't code it and run it ourselves, then piss off.' You have to go to LJ to look at LJ things. It's like they looked at Usenet and went 'Nope. Wrong. That's just broken.'

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Meta flash-crowds should be along real soon now.

(What on earth are you going to want to say to people in another city, Mr Bell? Etc.)

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

I'm sticking with LJ - the more twitterers Twitter and memers Facebook, the better the signal:noise ratio gets on here.

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

I have a far stronger preference for LJ. My FB is unusable for keeping in touch with people. I didn't even try and I've managed to aquire about 300 friends already...and that was keeping it to 'personal friends' only, which seemed to morph into 'and old school friends' and 'family' and 'other bands I know' and 'other business contacts' and has ended up a rather unholy rabble.

I did start with the intention of just having a nice corner of the net to myself and my regular social group and those who I like to keep in touch with.

Maybe one day I'll find something like that. For now, LJ is the closest I can get with Facebook useful for playing a few of said friends on word games. :)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It's yer Debordian Spectacle, innit.