Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Junior]

[rumdiary]

I think I deleted all of my old high school friends. Maybe kept one or two. I figure if I stopped talking to them there was probably a good reason. I think Facebook is a good way to maintain contact with new people that you meet rather than a way to look up people from your past.

[brento1138]

I think facebook is great. I think it's brought back the village mentality to our global world.

For most of human history, one person would know only a few hundred people or so in their tiny village and that's all the people you'd ever know or care about. You'd probably be great friends with many of them, spend your entire lives together, and know a whole lot about the people you didn't hang out with regularly.

These days, in our lives, so many people move to different parts of countries the size of the USA, Canada, and away across the globe to find work. One friend, for example, moves from Los Angeles to New York city, and would never see their best buddy except the occasional yearly visit. Families are dispersed across countries the size of Canada... (my favorite cousin lives in Newfoundland, and I live in Vancouver... thousands of kilometers apart).

Facebook I find much better than email, since you don't have to write an email in a semi-formal "back and forth" kind of way. You can see their pictures without asking.. watch what they're up to. See their children you would have never seen. Since many people don't want to invest the time to write a long email, sending a simple "hello" will just be fine now... as if you're walking down the street and seeing someone and simply saying "hello."

Now we're back to the village, although it is virtual. Most people on facebook have approx. 100-500 friends. It's the same number of people you'd know in a tiny village. Some you know well, some you don't. But everyone is informed about everyone... to some degree... just like a real village.

So, I'm down with it.

[travel zen]

+1

[UknowsI]

The status updates that annoys me a bit are the ones that are begging for attention but then are too important to reply. Like "I am speechless!" and then someone is curious and asks what is going on, but no reply. Some people come with these new updates all the time, so they are obviously checking facebook, but don't care to reply to any of the comments.

[Taya]

I love Facebook. I used to use messengers like MSN and ICQ but Facebook has replaced them. I use Facebook to socialize. For example if I wanted to have people over for a party, instead of calling everyone I want to invite (and leaving messages if they don't answer), I just create a Facebook event and invite everyone I want all at once. I can include directions to my house and have people RSVP. It's great!

You can easily block the kinds of status updates you don't want. I'm annoyed by "So-and-so just caught a Sunfish on Fishing Game" kind of updates.

My friend always leaves passive-aggressive messages as well. Stuff like "At least I know who my true friends are" and so on. This is annoying too but it doesn't really bother me.

[Globutron]

The only thing I find irritating, which thankfully I doesn't happen now that I've moved to Korea (Unless I go to Itaewon), is that Facebook appears to be a no.1 conversation.

All I had to do was walk down a street without an Mp3 on, and... well I couldn't count the amount of times I've heard 'oh yeah I use facebook, I've stopped using MySpace now, facebook is better' 'Oh I dunno you can do more with your page on MySpace' etc etc.

Then when MySpace kinda faded out it was just 'yeah have you seen the picture on facebook? The one where I'm at a party with a proper stupid pose'
or whatever.

It makes me sick. In the same way fellow teachers always talk about their teaching experience at work today or yesterday. And indeed what this very page is about. A good way to vent your facebook experiences.

I remember getting off a bus once and suddenly in my peripheral hearing, I heard 'facebook' and punched a window. Luckily I'm a feeble guy so there were no consequences.

-----

As for my use of it... I deleted all my uni 'friends' as soon as I graduated. I don't consider them friends at all. They were just useful. I add people for a while and delete them after said while if they aren't worth keeping.

Once I had a session of unpopularity contesting with a friend, where we would delete a few friends at a time to have less friends than the other. we got from abotu 200 to 65 ish each before I moved to Korea and inevitably had to add more people so the game was cancelled. Shows how much people mean to me.

[swashbuckler]

[PatrickGHBusan]

[jack_b57]

IMHO facebook only serves to dilute social interaction, not enhance it. What you gain in breadth, you lose in depth.

[cj1976]

One hand Facebook is so ubiquitous that it has become tedious, but on the other hand it's a useful tool for communication and socialisation.
If you want to get together with friends for a game of footy, a few beers etc it's much easier than texting/calling.
Even though I rarely update my FB page and I don't post any personal info like photos or random thoughts, I do use it often enough to consider myself a hypocrite if I criticize too harshly.

[DeMayonnaise]

"I deleted all my uni 'friends' as soon as I graduated."

So you don't have any friends from college? That's pretty sad. No, it's pretty funny.

[swashbuckler]

[AsiaESLbound]

[eb]

Facebook is lame. Actually, I have two. EB