My town had created its very own East Village within the four walls of a cruddy downstairs eatery

[koganbot]

I want you to post here how Facebook ruined your life. You see, my friend Tina (as in "Roger Williams In America" and "The Wind From My Head" in Real Punks Don't Wear Black) started a Facebook group last week called Campus Restaurant Revisited which she's been pressuring me to join. The thing is, I'm not on Facebook, since I don't want yet another social network hijacking my time. The Internet can suck the life out of you, another social network would squeeze me dry, and I'm not nearly caught up with the stuff I need to be doing anyway, etc. These days, a lot of people go to restaurants and coffeeshops so that they can bring their laptops and get the WiFi. Whereas, when I go to these places it's to get away from the 'Net. But...

It was like my little hometown had created its very own East Village* within the four walls of a cruddy downstairs eatery. This was in the Sixties, early Seventies. When the freaks were cutting school, that's where they went, and I get the feeling that for a lot of them that was their emotional home when what was happening in their nuclear family wasn't working for them. Like the East Village, the scene facilitated fucked-up behavior too, amid all the vast creativity, and you can be clingy and neurotic in your adopted families as much as in your real ones; but the freaks being so numerous and charismatic, they cracked open the social map of my entire high school. Wherever you were on the map, you never could settle into a place, because the places kept shifting. This could be rough on some people and it was rough on me, but it worked well for me too, in that it ensured I could never be smug, so it helped to create my brain. And for some kids it created space to flourish they'd never have had in a more steady setting. It also helped there to be a whole lot of interesting people in my world, wherever they found themselves, whether they were the freaks or not at all close to the freaks.

I wasn't one of the freaks; I was more a liberal veering into I don't know where. Didn't go into the Campus Restaurant much, basically 'cause I didn't know if I'd be welcome, though my guess now is that of course I'd have been. A year after I graduated I was back visiting town and I went to meet Tina at the Campus Restaurant, and after the two of us were done talking I saw my ex-friend and ex-nemesis Jeff (see "Junior High" and "Death Rock 2000" in Real Punks) and we had a really good talk, though what I mostly remember from it was that he was being self-derogatory in a way that I hadn't remembered him back when we'd been close; and it didn't dawn on me to see if it was safe to ask him the questions that I really wanted to ask. At one point when I was a senior I remember Maureen saying to me and Jay that Jeff was just a slug, and we gaped at her. Like, didn't she understand? This was JEFF KINNARD! He'd been to social life at Storrs Grammar School what James Brown was to soul. So the question I didn't even think to ask was what happened, how'd he change so that he'd be willing to give the impression to the beautiful Maureen Nolan that he was a slug? Why?

Anyway, Tina has sent me a PDF file of some of the posts from the group. I didn't see anything from Jeff there, though Peter Fish posted a photo of Jeff standing next to Mr. Pride, the art teacher. Most of the people posting I hadn't really known, and a lot of the names I don't recognize. But Tina is there, Tansy Mattingly is there, Steve Nesselroth is there, Tim Page is there, Larry Groff is there, Francesca Holinko is there.

I would like to join the group; not that I would put getting to know these people better over getting to know you guys better. But I do think it would be interesting to run some of my ideas by them about how "class" works and doesn't work in high school, how we have to rethink our notions of social class, and so forth. I doubt that Facebook has a good format for such a discussion, but then I've never been in love with the livejournal format either, and I've never gotten you people to participate in such a discussion for much more than a minute. Not that I have hopes that any one of them will participate either, but you never know, and I and they may have some info to offer on another that we can make special sense of. But I worry about joining Facebook, if the rest that comes with it will steal my time. I'm not doing enough of what needs to be my real work, as it is.

So. Tell me about Facebook. Can I avoid friending people, and avoid getting them to friend me? Is it easy to ignore, if, like me, you're fundamentally compulsive and have no OFF switch?

*If I were ever to start one of these groups, it'd be "Strand Book Store, 1977-1980."

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

You can remove yourself from general search listings, and stop people being able to send you friend requests (though this can sometimes make you look 'antisocial'). There are a whole bunch of privacy settings that you can tweak for hours. However, even if you are maximally private, you will still appear on any public friends lists or groups or events that have been made by your friends, so you can't be completely invisible. FB was blocked at my old work so I never got into the habit of checking it, but it is useful for organising events and reminding oneself that there are interesting people out there for whom the internet doesn't take up 70% of their waking hours. Just make sure you never add it to your bookmarks or your regular rounds and you'll probably be ok.

Livejournal is currently doing a rather good job of discouraging casual, non-paid-account-holding users from bothering to check the site via some intrusive ads. Facebook's ads are more easily blockable.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Facebook is rubbish for discussion, not bad for organising meet-ups and such. I really only use it to chat with one close friend, who favours it.

Clueless in Denver

[koganbot]

OK, signed up, but have no idea:

(1) How to link my Facebook page (not that I'm ever likely to do this, but I'm not sure how someone who doesn't know my Facebook page would find it)

(2) Block people from sending friend requests.

(3) I don't mind people seeing my information, though I wish I could block Facebook from knowing everyone I've ever emailed through EarthLink. I wish I could block EarthLink from knowing the same thing. I don't even have anyone in my address book. Christ.

[koganbot]

Oh yeah, and they don't seem to have a setting for "We will crash your computer if you stay here too long."

[koganbot]

Er, okay, found my profile page. By clicking on "profile." Duh.

[koganbot]

I actually don't mind people seeing my info or finding the page via a search engine, I just don't want 'em making friends requests and talking to me via Facebook rather than, say, emailing me (I wish there was a way to make my email accessible to anyone who wants it who isn't a spambot, which would be by having a little button that people can click that says "contact," and then they'd get my email, but as it is either I make the email public or not, and I can't just put "edcasual at earthlink dot net" as I do on my MySpace.)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

But people can just send you private FB messages anyway (if they have found you via Facebook then it is likely they have a Facebook account with which to message you). Then if you want them to have your proper email address, you can reply to them with it.

[koganbot]

Oh, actually what I want to know is if I can use html on Facebook. Will be a pain in the ass sharing links if I can't.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

(private messages will show up in your email alerts anyway)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

You can share links but nothing much more complicated than that.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

I supplied you a mini-network, entirely of friends you already have on LJ: once you are in a network. Basically if you accept my friend request, you will periodically be visible to anyone on my network; the algorithm will suggest you as a friend to them, and vice versa. As Kat says, you can switch off incoming friend-requests at any point: you have to delve into privacy settings, I believe.

You can also tweak it so that anything that appears on tumblr also appears -- more or less identically -- on twitter and FB at the same time. Or more usually several minutes later.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Facebook is much less of a time sink for me these days than it was a couple of years ago. Partly because fewer people seem to use it regularly, partly because Twitter has supplanted it. It's really useful but not for ~discussion~ at all - any in-depth conversation there tends to happen accidentally and only occasionally. (Like livejournal, in fact!)

[koganbot]

Er, unless I change my mind and use it for promoting my book, I don't think I want a mini-network yet. I may change my mind. Anyhow, I haven't clicked confirm for you or Kat (or anyone else) yet, though I assume I'll have to click Tina in order to join her group.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is basically the way to police it. Every new "friend" is a flaw in your defences! Most of your network you have no contact with, you see their updates, but they're not intellectually distracting

As soon as you confirm Tina, everyone she is friends with -- and actually wider than that -- will start being potentially aware of you. But with no one confirmed, you can stay reasonably obscure and in control of info.

For your book, a better route might be to start a group based round it and invite people, or get friends to invite people, to that. Groups also have potential to be open and closed: I'm pretty sure you needn't be friends with everyone involved, and that way it gets nosed around the world without you being directly pestered.

Similarly, you could actually start up a group for people who are interested in Kogan-approved conversations and post links there directing people to same?

But in both cases, if you're not gathering the crowds yourself -- by friending them -- you'd have to find people who did it for you a little..

[koganbot]

Well, I confirmed Tina, so the wall has been breached. I've set it so that only friends of friends can try to friend me, but Kat seems to be wrong about my ability to block everyone from trying to friend me. Oh well.

[koganbot]

Holy shit, Julia Cunningham is in the group. She's beautiful as ever, assuming her profile picture is recent.

And Bill McEvily and Bill Drouin. (I don't think this "no more time wasting" thing is going to work. Oh well, guess I'm sunk.)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Yes - I was wrong, sorry. They turned off that feature a few months ago and I started getting annoying friend requests that I just ignored.

[(Anonymous)]

AKinCLE says...

"Every new "friend" is a flaw in your defences!"

That's probably true, but I have my books and my poetry to protect me.

I think Facebook is odd, also. One gets all these e-mail nudges in one's mailbox (I used a tertiary address); if I wanted to e-mail these people, I would have done so. It's one of the reason I use pseudonyms online, and different names on different sites, at that.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I was going to send you a friend request, but you've set your privacy such that I can't do that somehow. (I am in Dub Dob network but I would assume not Tina's, even friendsfriends.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Frank, when yr ready you should seek out your LJ FB friends. It's not nearly as time-consuming as you might think, except to check up on old acquaintances. (And this has a certain novelty effect that may seem major at first and dies down to the point it would be pre-FB -- i.e. I'd talk to most of my old acquaintances once in a blue moon by chance.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Not sure if I'm in dubdobland, though.