From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: At What Age Will You Stop Using Facebook?
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:50:13 -0500 (EST)
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> In Joan Didion's essay on coming of age in New York City, she wrote:

> ... It seemed that the last time he had gone to a party where he
> had been promised "new faces," there had been fifteen people in the
> room, and he had already slept with five of the women and owed money
> to all but two of the men. ...

It's interesting how little overlap there is among the several DC-area
fannish groups I'm aware of.  WSFA, PRSFS, Fantek, and the Nookery
have essentially no overlap with each other.  The same with the
parties that former (?) WSFAn Rebecca Prather used to host.  I've
never been to LUMSFS, but I wouldn't be surprised if it too has little
or no overlap with any other group.

And of course this goes double for any group not directly related to
fandom.  Tomorrow, for instance, I have the choice between attending a
local ham radio group or a talk at the Philosophical Society.  I'm all
but certain I'm the only person who has attended both organizations'
events.

> Imagine 7 years spent living in a college dorm,

I've been living in this apartment for more than a third of a century.
(I just installed yet another bookcase yesterday.)  Close enough?

> or 15 years spent attending the parties you went to in your
> twenties.

I wish I was still attending Disclave, as I did in my twenties.
I did attend them for more than 15 years.

> Now imagine yourself perusing a Facebook stream daily for a full
> 25 years.

> Doesn't that just feel like too long?

Facebook is unfortunately only one of numerous antisocial networks,
i.e. walled gardens that are closed to everyone who doesn't sign up
on the same network, that have sprung up over the past decade or so.
It's a retreat to the bad old days before the Internet, when people
had accounts on AOL, BIX, CompuServe, Delphi, Genie, Prodigy, The
Source, or other closed systems, and could only talk to others on
the same system.

Anyhow, I would never want to become dependent on any closed system.
Nothing prevents the owner from charging for its use, adding obnoxious
terms of service, or simply kicking me off.  Or going out of business,
as Facebook is likely to do once advertisers discover that 99% of all
pages are fake, duplicates, pranks, jokes, bots, or aliases.

A friend of mine was recently banned from LiveJournal for some bogus
reason.  Years of his content vanished instantly, including all
comments he'd ever made on other LiveJournals.  And LiveJournal is
far from the worst offender in this.

I prefer newsgroups.  Nobody owns them, nobody can kick anyone off,
and nobody can shut them down.  (What about obnoxious users?  Everyone
gets to decide for himself who, if anyone, to "killfile.")  If I
haven't been active on rasff for 25 years yet, it's only because that
newsgroup wasn't founded until 22 years ago.  According to Google I've
posted 39,871 messages there, an average of 5 per day for 22 years.