Your comment brings up a point that actually bothers me the most about this discussion -- the delusion we all seem to have that Facebook conversations are Very Super Bad, and if only we could pry Facebook out of the hands of the naive, dumb little users, they'd be free from the spell Facebook has cast on them and start posting insightful, kind, witty writing again.
No, super duper no. People are shouting into the void because there's a burning need for humans to shout into voids. If it weren't Facebook's void, it'd be some other void. The common denominator here is people.
Human brains validate their existences by communicating, and Facebook built the most effective communication tool that's ever been created. It's not Facebook's fault that most people aren't able to create anything other than hateful shouting.
I’ve been a Facebook user since 2008. I regularly use it today. I don’t consider myself or any of my Facebook friends “naive, dumb little users.” The interactions on Facebook in, say, 2010 were decidedly less awful than they are today. In 2010, my news feed was composed primarily of content from my Facebook friends, or pages I specifically followed. It was fun. Old connections from my childhood church, etc. would comment on a photo and we’d chat. Someone would post a status, and I’d reply. I don’t think human nature has shifted very dramatically in a decade. The platform influences what interactions happen. I’m not making an appeal to technological determinism; people are people. But Facebook is not an impartial middleman that is only “connecting” people.
No, super duper no. People are shouting into the void because there's a burning need for humans to shout into voids. If it weren't Facebook's void, it'd be some other void. The common denominator here is people.
Human brains validate their existences by communicating, and Facebook built the most effective communication tool that's ever been created. It's not Facebook's fault that most people aren't able to create anything other than hateful shouting.