

How a Relationship Dies on Facebook - danso
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/how-a-relationship-dies-on-facebook.html

======
doctorpangloss
Relationships die for a lot of reasons. Facebook could just be that cathartic
destination of our love-anxieties. It's a convenient target, organizing
memories and suitors and character in a psychologically-exploitative document.

I don't think Facebook generates envy, or even facilitates it. It just
organizes it. I think if you feel envy and jealousy you're going to spread it
out among lots of anxieties or maybe focus it on Facebook—not necessarily
experience more of it.

Besides, think of all the healthy interactions we get from Facebook. It lets
the folks who have a hard time selling themselves in real life advertise their
character in an uninhibited way. We get to advertise the pretty sides and the
ugly sides of ourselves, if we choose.

It's like any form of expression. Generally good I think. Though I did read
lately that learning how to broadcast is not the same as learning how to
converse, and maybe that's the root poison. It is fundamentally about selling
yourself and sharing a lot, which isn't always a healthy thing.

Especially for relationships.

------
Proleps
_Nineteen per cent of teens have posted updates, photos, or other content that
they later regret sharing, and seventy-four per cent have deleted people from
their network._

I don't really know what these numbers are supposed to show. I've shared
content that I've later regretted sharing, but it wasn't a lot of regret. If
someone had asked me that question in a survey I would have probably answered
yes, but it wouldn't really mean anything.

I've also deleted people from my network, but that was because I didn't really
care about them. I can't really find any important information in these
numbers

------
plg
I deleted my FB account a couple of years ago for many of the reasons cited in
the article. There is, however, a social cost to not being on FB, especially
if your social circle is not technologically adept. A salient example: An old
friend of mine (like many people, I gather) has gradually slipped into a mode
where she uses FB exclusively for electronic communication. She no longer
checks her email accounts. She only uses FB messaging and FB status updates to
keep in touch with her friends. In today's "simplify your life" culture (which
I think is a good thing, generally) she has pared down her electronic
footprint to a single service, FB. Recently I discovered through a mutual
friend (over email) that my friend's mother is basically dying of cancer, she
has travelled back home to be with her mother, etc etc. I didn't know any of
this because I'm not on FB, and FB is where my friend chose to inform
everyone, keep everyone up to date on progress, appeal for donations, organize
social events, etc. Sure, I could be in touch by telephone, and obviously I
wasn't ... but what if your friend(s) are not really phone people? I guess the
point of this comment is, what if your friends are FB people? If you choose
not to be, there is a social cost. Having said all that, I still will not
establish a (new) FB account. (I presume despite deleting it, my old one still
exists somewhere in the bowels of their servers)

~~~
plg
downvoted? seriously? perhaps it would be informative to explain why? in all
seriousness, I'd like to know

------
zipfle
I closed my fb account two or three years ago, at a point when I was really
virulently anti-fb. I still haven't re-opened it, but I've mellowed a bit--not
that I approve of it, really--it's a disgusting panopticon at best--but it's
at least sufficiently obvious that it's hard for me to feel like anyone hangs
out there without understanding what the basic dynamic is.

Now, articles like this don't make me feel bad for the kids who 'have to' use
facebook (not that they don't; it sucks being ostracized, we all know).
Really, they make me remember this talk by Steve Yegge[1] about how stupid it
is that so many smart people spend their time working on cat pictures.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8)

------
l33tbro
Anyone else sick of these high-brow publications staffed with greying gen-xers
trying to "understand the youth", "the shifting nature of our relationships",
in this "crazy digital age". It seems every week there's a new Salon, NY-
Times, Newyorker, etc half-baked stab at trying to catch the youth zeitgeist
and define it. It was interesting a few years ago when social networks were
new, but this is so well worn. Is culture plateauing or something? Stop being
so heck-darn lazy.

~~~
sdevlin
You put quotes around several phrases that are not used in the featured
article. I suspect you do not understand this punctuation mark.

~~~
l33tbro
Welp, your suspicions are wrong friendo:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes)

~~~
jpatokal
A scare quote is still a quote: _Scientist X says that "nuclear radiation" is
"harmless"._

If you're not actually quoting somebody, the term of the art is "making up
shit".

~~~
l33tbro
Wow, I love how you're so concerned about my grammar. But you're wrong,
homeboy. If you actually read my comment, you'd grok that I was actually
addressing a tired theme within the body of recent socio-tech think-pieces, as
opposed to directly quoting the article. The scare quotes (which I have
ironically employed) relate not to a direct citation, but allude to an over-
arching theme. I fail to see how this would not be obvious to somebody with
the barely the collective IQ of 11 physical education teachers.

------
Apocryphon
I don't really think the film showed that social networks are a brand new way
of social interaction. Certainly, it can be used that way. But jealous lovers
went through their significant others' letters just as well. People half-paid
attention to telephone conversations. Social networks are just another arena
for those kinds of human interaction to appear.

What the film did strike me is about how fundamentally society is getting tied
to the internet. These kids have their entire social life connected to each
other through technological proxies. People are on computers over ten hours of
day, regardless if it's part of their occupation or not. This seems unhealthy.

------
Kequc
I deleted my facebook account about 5 years ago and I haven't regretted it for
one day. From my perspective the people that use facebook are weak. They use
it because other people tell them to use it and no other reason. If they don't
see that then they are even weaker.

Companies that brand through facebook are worse. The company is such a bad one
that the only way it builds its customer base is by appealing to these people.

The whole thing is depressing.

~~~
scott_s
It's a communication tool, just like email, phone and letters. "Using" it does
not have to mean you're on it for hours a day. My main purpose for using it is
to keep in contact with people who live far away from me, and to organize
meeting up with people who live near me. I find it strange that you think that
makes me "weak."

~~~
emillon
> It's a communication tool, just like email, phone and letters.

Except that it's a public company that makes money selling your data to
advertisers. It's a very important difference compared to letters, phone or
(to a certain extent) email.

~~~
jschuur
Except it doesn't actually sell your data to advertisers. It gives advertisers
the ability to target people with certain types of data for a limited amount
of time. They don't deliver your data to them.

~~~
onedev
I sincerely hate the term "selling data". No one "sells data". It's a term I
think people use because it sounds scarier.

------
seiji
Do companies ever release linguistic guidelines?

Do you have "a facebook?" A facebook page? A facebook account? A facebook
profile?

People don't "friend my facebook" they "friend me on facebook," so is it "a me
on facebook?"

Twitter? Twitter page? Twitter account? Twitter profile? "Check out my
twitter," but do people say "I have a twitter?"

GitHub? Do people say "I have a github?" Check out my github? Check out my
github account? Follow me on github? Follow my github account?

Didn't all this start with myspace? Is it a my myspace or a myspace? Do you
have a myspace or a myspace page or a my myspace page?

Is every sentence in this post a question? Isn't it exhausting?

~~~
whaleye
Lego tries to get people to call it's toys "Lego bricks" rather than "Legos"
but I think this has not really been successful.

~~~
Turing_Machine
People who are legitimate Lego experts know better than to call them "Legos".
These guys are being touted as Tech Gods who Have Something Important To Say
To Their Generation.

While it may be a little bothersome to hear a random person call them "Legos",
it's not the same as hearing a self-proclaimed expert call them that.

~~~
philwelch
There are legitimate Lego experts? Also, I don't think I've met a single human
being in person who _doesn 't_ call them Legos.

~~~
amirmc
I'm British and until American TV I'd never heard anyone call them 'Legos'

------
InclinedPlane
Ah yes, this sort of thing.

Facebook, like the internet, like blogging, like twitter, like crowdfunding,
like videogames, like books, like e-commerce, is not some crazy new universe,
it's just a medium where human beings can do what they've always done, but
perhaps in different ways. It doesn't change the underlying capability of
humans for good or ill, nor does it force humans to act differently.

If a drunk person initiates a fistfight with someone else in the parking lot
after a football game most people are likely to place this event into the
proper context, to put the responsibility on the individual primarily. But if
the same thing were to happen under "more unusual" circumstances suddenly all
logic flies out the window and people are more inclined to think those
circumstances are somehow intimately related to the altercation. If someone
kills someone over a video game, if people get into a scuffle after they run
into each other on segways, or if some other drug is involved than alcohol,
suddenly personal responsibility takes a back seat and moral panic rears its
head. If a newspaper gets a story wrong that's one thing, if a blogger gets a
story wrong suddenly it's a condemnation of all of internet journalism to its
core. And here we have an example of people behaving badly and participating
in perhaps human kind's oldest pass-time: horribly broken relationship
behavior. And yet somehow all of this is special and unique and new because it
happens on facebook, as though all of human history preceding facebook had
been a bland parade of utterly normative relationship behavior.

People are weird, sometimes in a good way sometimes in a bad way, and when
that weirdness becomes evident on a new medium it implies nothing about that
medium other than that it allows humans to act like they've always acted.

P.S. This doesn't mean I think facebook is "good". There are lots of
legitimate and even fundamental reasons to dislike or even hate facebook, but
this narrative is not a particularly good critique of the platform.

~~~
Turing_Machine
See also: "Internet predators". Sure, they exist, and you need to teach your
kids to be safe, but the depressing fact remains that most predators are found
in malls, churches, schools, parks... but those things are not as conducive to
mass hysteria.

~~~
mkr-hn
Do you have data on this? Everything I've heard tells me most people like that
are someone the victim knows.

~~~
Turing_Machine
You're right. I should have included "in the home" in that list. The same is
true for murder victims, I believe. But Internet predators and random serial
killers make more exciting TV news stories, so that's what we hear about.

------
thenerdfiles
Facebook draws the line between hominids that are serious about personal
development, professionalism, the future, and those who are potentially
unmindful, postwhores, where each, as with all things, exists on a spectrum
waiting to be grokked by neuroscientists.

It's a proverbial turning on of a light-switch to see what is a roach and what
is a fixture.

------
jsnk
“Facebook exposes everything and nothing about you at the same time, whereas
with Chatroulette you can hide behind the nonentity of it. It’s that kind of
danger that’s necessary for honest conversation.”

I think this quote nails the problem of Facebook. Facebook pushes social
interaction further away from genuineness and honest discourse we long for.
Posting pictures, statuses, etc are carefully constructed user activities to
fish for "likes" or "comments". It just seems frivolous and fake. Facebook
tries so hard not to be seen this way. If you watch some videos previously
released by Facebook introducing Timeline and stuff, they try so hard to be
like the real photo album filled with photos taken with 35mm camera you and
your family kept for decades. If this is what they are striving for, why do
they still attempt to reduce human response to a "like".

Sure, this is not just a problem of Facebook. Even in real life, it is hard to
make real connection with people. But at least in real life, there's some
level of spontaneity. We can't always think ahead about what we are going to
say or how we are going to react to the interlocuteur which brings out some
genuineness in human interaction. Making meaningful lasting connection in real
life is hard as is. Facebook push a person further down into the trenches of
disguises and fakeries in dealing with people.

Just today, I wrote about why it's difficult to have an honest opinion about
something online.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6386647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6386647))
As a response to the problem, I created Dmtri
([http://dmtri.com/](http://dmtri.com/)). I hope HN users check it out. Feel
free to comment what you think about it.

~~~
scott_s
Of course I want responses if I post a picture on Facebook. It's exactly the
same when I show a picture to a friend out in the world: I want a response. I
have something I want to _share_. This desire does not become magically "bad"
just because it happens online.

I have family and friends who live far away. I don't have the opportunity to
visit them as much as I would like. If it was not for Facebook, I wouldn't see
these pictures, or find out about events. The obvious counter to this is, "You
would probably visit them more." I do not think that is true. Because I am
able to find out what is going on with them on a regular basis, they stay in
my mind, and I miss them more, and I want to go visit. I think that without
Facebook and the ease through which I can maintain connections, these
relationships would fade.

And the obvious response to _that_ is that the relationships weren't that
strong to begin with, which I also don't think is true. Maintaining
friendships over distance can be awkward for people who don't have a history
of talking on the phone, or expressing themselves through text.

Spending an inordinate amount of time on Facebook is bad. But this notion that
using it _at all_ is bad seems silly to me. People used to say similar things
about phones.

