| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.156.32.78 |
I've been having difficulties all day. Is it the Higgs boson? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
I wasn't able to get to it for some time this afternoon, Des, but it seems ok now. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.226.176.25 |
It has been iffy for a few days but I've got a crap connection in the wop wops. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.166.73 |
I should see your Dr about that, Ally. I hear it's a common problem with older women. ;) | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Simon, you made me nearly wet myself laughing at that!  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
it may not be down at all - you may be: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/facebook_is_making_us_miserabl.html | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Interesting article. And interesting comments underneath - quite a few people have left FB behind, it seems. Me? I've never bothered with it. It would certainly make me miserable 'cos I don't have any friends to connect with ...  (joke  ) | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'm in your camp, Caroline - me not on Facebook. It's funny to read about the seemingly huge effort it takes to wean one's self off of it, to those addicted to it.... But then, I am addicted to fiddling with my own smart phone, so I shouldn't throw stones. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Actually, re the comment on that blog saying that people on FB feel the need to compete with each other - if a "friend" reports a good thing happening to them, then they have to get one up on them too. That's why, when I first set up a website/blog for myself a while ago, I stopped bothering with it after a short while - I simply found I didn't have anything particularly interesting to report to people! Sad, aren't I? How do you folk who use FB find so much to talk about with other people all the time? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.156.32.78 |
Much is small talk on FB. Small talk (and pub talk) makes the world go round? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.213.192 |
No, that's gravity. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.39.151 |
I love the idea of Facebook but have realised you have to be in the right frame of mind to use it; it's a crowded dance hall, not a pub lounge. For ages i've been treating it like the latter and no one hears me. I don't have a very 'facebooky' lifestyle or mind, so I find it tricky and end up being alternately needy/random/aggressive. I have to say it does make you jealous and sad sometimes. You put out this precious little thing and it goes unnoticed and you can feel sad all day. But then my life is very small. But maybe that's the problem - go to facebook expecting it to replace a social life and it just won't happen, and if you're of a senstive nature it'll hurt you. I go on it now as a kind of mental exercise, come up with hopefully odd things to keep my mind composing. And to say 'hi', which is all it seems to be for, I think. Which is actually ok. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Facebook for me is a daft laugh, and an easy way to network and catch up with freinds I rarely get to see (maybe once a year, at conventions). That's it. If you go there expecting it to replace a social life, you're kind of missing the point. If you don't have a social life, there's nothing to talk about on Facebook. Btw, Tony - just out of interest, why did you unfriend me ages ago? | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 77.98.13.43 |
The thing with Facebook and Twitter is that everyone's experience of them is so different. Whether they are interesting or dull for you depends on whether you have friended or followed interesting people; and of course it makes a difference whether those people find you interesting in return. I'm still working on that last bit... I do know what Tony means, in that it can be disappointing to have a carefully worded apercu go unliked on Facebook. That's something I like about Twitter - thanks to the search functions stuff you say is more likely to find its way to someone who'll be interested. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.39.151 |
Zed - I think you were getting on my tits at the time. I've unfriended loads of people, then refriended them. If people don't reply to me in ages I get huffy - yes, huffy! - and sort of sad. I'm a bit soft like that. And, um, wasn't your post there basically everything I said?! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Facebook has provided this oddly unnatural aspect to life; unknown for all of recorded history, but suddenly here, mundane as it ultimately is... I think?... But I was lurking (yes, I will sometimes lurk on Facebook), and making the connections between friends of friends of friends of friends... and then stumbled across the page of a girl I'd not seen since high school. Now, this girl wasn't barely a friend, just someone I was around, and only at school. This girl was not in my consciousness probably since then, and there was I'd say no way of it ever being dredged up - the would never need to be! And yet, there this girl was, flooding back into my memory; now, all grown up, with a husband and kids... and for a few moments I was a voyeur into her life, her private life.... Before Facebook, we all knew people in our past, that faded away forever; they were mere memories, like early episodes in a large novel or soap series; most of them utterly forgotten, dead and buried in our minds, with no gravestones to even mark their existence; some few preserved in the amber of their youth as we once knew them. Now, for the first time in history, we can summon them back as if from the dead, and SEE them; see them as they've progressed (or not) through time to the present, like a scryer in a crystal ball.... ... and there's something unsettling about all this.... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
Zed - Tony unfriended me too! Then I sent him a ten shilling postal order and we're friends again now. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Apparently, the photo at the heart of this article made the rounds on Facebook, and is now raising a controversy. The photo, to me, verges upon horror, because one can discern no explicable reason for taking it... and the article too, is at a loss to explain what could be the "purpose" behind it: "The purpose of the photo, its inscription and its intended audience are not known...." http://www.airforcetimes.com/mobile/index.php?storyUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.airforce times.com%2Fnews%2F2011%2F12%2Fair-force-lackland-casket-photo-investigation-121 311w%2F | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.117.38 |
Yeah, it's disturbing because it feels like a small society with an utterly alien psychology. I had the same feeling watching BRIDESMAIDS. I felt like I was watching a film the body snatchers would make. A sequel to body snatchers would be good. What is their society like? Just wait 20 years, you say? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Tony, I live to get on your tits. I blame ebooks. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Craig - it's pretty obvious that photo was originally taken as some kind of sick (and obscure) joke. But you're right; it's scary as hell. The Internet numbs people; it reduces everyone to words on a screen, the occasional weird photograph of a character in a film you dip in and out of. Weird jokes, in-jokes, non-jokes...they litter the web. It's a series of odd cliques, so small and obscure that maybe 2 or 3 people are in on the joke, but the Internet sends them out to millions. It's a weird place. Always remember that, and you're safe. Never take it seriously and you're fine. It's a sucking pit. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.189 |
Proto - I actually have a Bodysnatchers sequel about such developments slowly growing in my mind. I think I've mentioned it before though, so I won't go on. |