What Was Your Facebook Tipping Point?

Facebook is the first thing I left and felt really good about. Before that, I left the field hockey team, several jobs, a group, carbohydrates – and about all this, I felt, at least, a fit of remorse. Not like that, Facebook! I can’t believe the devil’s net lasted 15 years. I know people who have spent at least five of those fifteen looking after their lives for an audience they shouldn’t be messing with. Think of all the epic poems these people didn’t write!

MELISSA KIRSH, CHIEF EDITOR

All Facebook has done for me is provided my uncles and one college guy with a platform on which to argue with me about capitalism. It’s also my one-stop shop for daily reminders of how I was married and my dog ​​was alive, and a way for me to read negative comments about myself if the usual comment sections aren’t enough. I guess the only reason I’m still on it is because it’s the only social network my boyfriend uses mostly offline (and I’m his only source of memes!) And it’s a good way to learn about shows in town. If it weren’t for Facebook, I probably wouldn’t have known about the Eric Bachmann show I went to last night. But I’m sure there are mailing lists for this sort of thing.

CLAIR LAUER, FOOD AND BEVERAGE EDITOR

My experience with Facebook changed from being excited when I went to college to something I never used. In the meantime, it was great when I lived in Milwaukee and was part of a private mums group called Bayview Broads – it was a community of 200 moms who supported each other and gave great advice. But it was also a platform for family members who lacked proper posting etiquette to add their two cents to my page. This is a wormhole of people of the past, full of irrelevant pictures that I don’t need to see. This is a playground for peeping, which is why I left. Now I can’t even remember the password and that’s fine with me. She is home to only pictures of my 20s that I wish I could hold onto.

Heather Huss, creative producer

Over the past fifteen years, Facebook has, directly or indirectly, destroyed almost every online communication method I have used. Opening Facebook is more convenient than visiting several Yahoo groups, web forums, or several different news websites. It replaced mailing lists and email ad lists because spam made our inboxes unbearable. It thrives because we can get information on Facebook that was only available through phone calls 15 years ago. (Nobody likes phone calls, except for generations that have grown up with the need for them.) We pay the price with data and privacy, but we pay for it as a society, not as individuals. I could log out of Facebook and lose touch with people, but Facebook will still store all of my data. I like to see all the baby pictures. I hate that if I post something, Facebook will recognize the faces of my children and ask me who they are.

Beth Skorecki, Health Editor

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with Facebook, and I only created it because some of the friends I met at space camp wanted to keep in touch. I’ve used this from time to time over the years, but it has never significantly affected my relationship with friends or family. Basically, I only used it for self-promotion of my projects. Even then, I feel like I have not escaped the epic ways that Facebook has changed society, and my personal data has definitely not escaped the clutches of Facebook. There was a time when the idea of ​​documenting my life forever seemed attractive. But now my tweets are set to be deleted automatically, I haven’t posted a post to Facebook in almost 6 months (I only keep it because I need to do it for random purposes), and I only use Instagram stories. I am for all these social networks.

abu zafar, video producer

For a while, Facebook made it easy to choose which events and parties to go to, depending on who else was going. Which is the right approach, because that’s what the sides are for. Now I log into Facebook once a week and are bombarded with “notifications” that people I hardly know have posted something. The site convinces me very well to stay away.

Nick Douglas, staff writer

For the past few years, Facebook has been harmless to me, as I mostly use social media on Instagram and Twitter. This can be a fun way these days to find out what people I don’t associate with otherwise, and otherwise I hardly use it. But my strongest emotional memory of Facebook is how crazy it drove me crazy in my first couple of years in college, when I looked at photos from parties or trips I didn’t participate in and convinced everyone that everyone was having time all the time. better than me. Even now, it’s embarrassing to admit how much I cared about it when I was 18 or 19, and how much time and emotional energy I put into it makes me sad! At the time, I was so excited that I had it, but college would be better off without Facebook.

Virginia Smith, Managing Editor

I still remember the day I signed up for thefacebook.com. I was an early enough follower in my college to lay claim to the stupid First Floor Facebook Member group that someone created that eventually disappeared along with the “member since” on each person’s profile. Ah, the good old days. Now, almost every day when I’m on Facebook, I think, “Maybe I’ll leave this week.” It seems to me that I am getting less and less useful information from the algorithmic Facebook feed straight to my face. And even then, it seems to me that most of my friends’ updates are related to one of the following topics: how great our work is, how rich we are, and how our great work allows us to flaunt our wealth for everyone to see. It’s getting old. That said, Facebook is a useful tool for getting direct information on new topics: ticket sales and promotions for my favorite groups, helpful articles I might not have seen in my extensive Feedly collection, new cute animal gifs, etc. E. Maybe if I cross out all my friends and just follow the companies and brands that I care about, Facebook will become a more useful RSS reader rather than a platform for sharing information.

David Murphy, Senior Technology Editor