

Ask HN: I had more friends before Facebook. Anyone agree? - jneal

First, I don't have a blog, and if I did no one would read that blog...but I had an interesting thought today, and having been a daily reader of HN for about 2.5 years, I felt this was the most appropriate place to share it, and ask if anyone else agreed.<p>The title says it all, but I will explain. Before Facebook, there was Myspace...but to be honest, most of my real friends weren't even on Myspace, or if they were, they weren't constantly updating their status on a daily basis...maybe every couple of days at most I would see something from them. Before Facebook, when I wanted to know what a friend was up to, I had to call them. I could text, but it would take so many texts to have a decent conversation that I would simply prefer to call my friends. I can remember as early as 4 years ago I would talk to many friends on a daily basis for sometimes many hours. Actually talking to my friends would cause us to want to meet up for lunch, or just to hang out. So I would constantly be hanging out and talking to people, I was just way more social to be honest.<p>If you fast forward to today, in a Facebook-minded society, all of my friends that I used to call on the phone now update their status on a daily basis, and even provide me with pictures which before I could only see on my tiny 2 inch cell phone screen.<p>I know what all of my friends did yesterday thanks to Facebook. I know what all of my friends are doing today thanks to Facebook. And I know what all of my friends are doing tomorrow, thanks to Facebook. It seems so much more social right? I mean, it is called a social network? Yet, I feel more anti-social than ever! I can still call my friends - but what will I talk about? Hey, saw you went to the movies, how was that? .... I'm sorry, but already knowing the details of everyone's life just makes it impossible for my analytical mind to justify calling them.<p>I wonder if anyone else agrees? If anyone else has any further thoughts they could add to the discussion? Is it just me...am I the one being anti-social?
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achompas
How old are you? I'm tempted to chalk this up to cointegration between you
losing friends (like many others) while growing older and Facebook's
popularity increasing.

Its harder to make friends as you grow older, and you grow apart from friends
over the years, so your net # of friends declines with time. Meanwhile, we're
growing up while Facebook becomes more popular. Thus, it's easy to blame FB
for a traditional phenomenon related to the passage of time in one's life.

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jneal
You may be right..although I do believe Facebook is partially to blame at
least. I am 26...and I've got friends who have moved away, friends who have
gotten married, etc...BTW I've been married myself, but I never allowed
marriage to keep me from having friends

~~~
petervandijck
It's likely the age. At 26, friends start drifting away and it's hard to make
new ones. People have less time and inclination to spend hours on the phone at
this age.

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jamesbritt
I've help organize a number of events in and around Phoenix, AZ, and my
favorites have always been the ones where there was little planning and lots
of room for socializing and discussion.

Most of the time the info presented at these events could be found on the
'Net, likely faster and in more detail.

If information efficiency were the goal then that would be the way to go. But
at the better gathering the talks or presentations are just a ruse to trick
people into getting away from their homes or cubicles and interact in real-
time with actual flesh and blood people. Serendipity takes over from there.
That's why the best conferences have short talks and lots of breathing room;
you want to prod people into talking to each other.

I can see the same thing with getting all your social info from a Webs site.
Sure, Facebook will tell you when someone has seen a movie, but without that
real-time, F2F (or even phone )conversation you miss the meandering dialog
that bounces around into all sorts of areas you didn't even think to talk
about until that moment.

The digital life can end up being awfully clinical. Lots of data, not much
information.

~~~
missn
One might argue that knowing all these "catch-up" details beforehand (through
Facebook) could allow for more deep conservations when people meet up - they
can immediately dive into the deep stuff and skip the catching up part.

Yet, as you've mentioned, small talk leads to many more tangents than what
you'd usually get online. And, if you actually eavesdrop on conservations (or
even look at your own), they usually start slow with small talk but eventually
build up momentum towards deeper issues.Sometimes we just need time to settle
in a conservation and those "what's up" starters usually help in that regard.

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deweyusa
Finally, we're starting to see through the mess that Facebook is causing. It
seems so innocuous and fun at first, but it takes years until we look back and
realize exactly what you're saying now. I remember having hours of
conversation with friends prior to Facebook via the phone. Now, it's like it's
expected that I'll "just know" what my friends are doing (after all, they took
the time to post it, so they almost take it as a form of offense if I don't
know what they're up to. "What? You didn't see my post about my gardening
project?").

I really hope our generation figures out how to get out of this quagmire
somehow. I fear, however, that just as innocently as we started this project
now known and accepted as "social media", we will be too far down the rabbit
hole to reverse course, let alone even recognize what we've done to our true
relationships with internet communication.

~~~
starter
_I really hope our generation figures out how to get out of this quagmire
somehow."_ What is one thing we could do the reinvent the Social Network
concept?

I recently asked _What to build into a better social network_
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2586836>) I'm on a mission to build a
bigger, better network.

I'm starting to see that people are longing for a social experience that is
truly social. Better algorithms just aren't cutting it. What will?

~~~
jamesbritt
_Better algorithms just aren't cutting it. What will?_

Make things harder rather than easier.

I mean, I do not want 5-line bot scripts slurping up my associations. I do not
want it to be easy for Joe Blow to learn what book I last read or what foods I
like. I do not want to be fodder for every Social Media expert.

Having some sort of speed bumps might help filter out the frictionless-friends
from the real friends.

Facebook had that initially, to some extent, by requiring a school. Now
they're icing the roads.

I don't have a clear idea on this other than a gut feeling that making some
things at least slightly troublesome might go a long way to helping evolve
real social networks.

~~~
starter
_Make things harder rather than easier._ Got it.

Social media "experts" need better ways to spend their time and starting at
schools with .edu addresses will help to build concentrated user bases. So,
THAT won't be a problem.

Based on feedback, maybe FB's problem is simply that it's no longer
theFaceBook. Its not exclusive, hardly worth my time and the structure is
vastly overbuilt for what its meant to be: a people directory.

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seangeo
I can relate. I have an old high school friend that I used to maintain pretty
regular contact with via email since I moved interstate. Early on in the
Facebook rise we both had accounts, she still uses her's but I lost interest
in it. However, to her online social interaction = facebook and we no longer
email each other.

I find Twitter is a bit different though, since it is not like putting your
whole life up on a page, it can just be short catchups fairly regularly. Maybe
it's better in this respect because it doesn't try to take the place of things
like phone calls and email in the way Facebook does.

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galuggus
could it be you were younger?

to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld (badly) you get to a certain age and don't take
on any new friends. that's it you're full

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_delirium
That's more or less the thesis of Sherry Turkle's recent book _Alone Together_
, which you might find interesting. It's also interesting because Turkle was
quite techo-optimist in the '80s; _The Second Self_ (1984) was much more
positive on the role of computers (and things like the then-new BBS scene) for
interpersonal relationships.

~~~
jneal
Interesting..I will definitely check that out especially if I can find it on
Audible. I would say I'm the same way. I love technology and I love social
networks...I've got many friends to join Myspace back in the day, and even
Facebook today...And it's only now that I've even had this realization.

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cydonian_monk
I agree with you completely, and I've even said it before here on HN: Facebook
(as it is now) inhibits active social behaviour. (At least among those that
aren't your close friends.) Why chase down or call up "random friend X from
college" to see how they are and what they've been up to when you can get the
digest version on Facebook?

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Mz
I hardly ever log in to my facebook account. It's not really my cup of tea.
Nonetheless, I can somewhat relate to your experience in that at one time I
had a good friend online who stopped emailing me and then popped in out of the
blue to comment on something I had posted on my website. It turns out this
person had begun following my website and that apparently met their needs and
they felt no need to actually engage me in conversation. This was kind of an
icky moment for me. The friendship later ended.

I continue to wrestle with my relationship to such things. You can only have
so many actual close friends. There are only so many hours in the day and
close friendship requires sustained, on-going interaction to maintain. For
this reason, I tend to think "social networks" are doomed to be shallow
affairs. Yet, paradoxically, I find that I share a lot more info online than I
do with most folks I know in person. I'm not shy there just isn't enough time
in the day to explain some things to everyone I meet, so I just don't want to
open up some can of worms. Still, I wrestle with this process where I seem to
gradually be working on developing an online audience where the relationship
is inherently lopsided: Other people often know a great deal more about me
than I know about them. But this isn't really what I think of as friendship
and I like having friends, which have been a tad scarce of late (remaking your
life usually causes you to shed friends).

I don't have answers for you. Just sharing some of my own internal questions,
FWIW.

