I am afraid of using Facebook! (Few friends)

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Luska
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27 Feb 2012, 9:54 pm

I am afraid of using Facebook.

I have few to no friends in real life. I could add many acquaintances but many of these 'acquaintances" who can become "Facebook friemds" are from college (professors, classmates etc) or some other place and have no business viewing what my family, for example, writes on my wall. My facebook account looks empty. Im not comfortable letting "facebook friends"/acquaintances just view anything. I wish there was someway to control what posts Person A or Person B could view and not view on my wall.

Im thinking of starting a new account from scratch and just add people whom I can trust. it sounds good but Im afraid. It will only be my family, cousins and just a few other people and I am afraid I might have less than 60 people on my list. That's embarrassing by facebook standards. I know for a fact that 300+ friends are necessary so that you won't be judged as socially inept on Facebook.

I have been hiding the fact that I am socially inept for years and that I have always felt there was a black hole in my head when it came to talking to people.It's not shyness or a phobia. Just me "not being there".Now everyone will know when they see that i have few friends. And I might be viewed as a loser. Is it acceptable to have 60 facebook friends or less?

I want to connect with people who I have not seen in years. Im not so much afraid of having less than 60 facebook friends I just don't want to be treated differently by people.

========
Another thing. If someone writes on my facebook wall does it appear in his/her wall meaning people who I don't even know can see it ?



modelmaker
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27 Feb 2012, 10:02 pm

I only have 20 :(
But hey, dont let it bother you too much, I really dont know why I've still not deleted my account on facebook.

You'll make better friends here & its more fun !


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sacrip
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27 Feb 2012, 10:08 pm

Just speaking for myself, if I saw someone with few friends on Facebook, my only thought would be, "That person must get a lot more accomplished than I ever do." Gaining Facebook friends is a relatively fast process. As long as you're on reasonably good terms with someone, it's rare someone will deny a friend request.

As for non-family seeing family stuff, any post you make can include or exclude whoever you like. I THINK you can also control if your family member's posts end up viewable by anybody or only certain people.


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questor
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27 Feb 2012, 10:35 pm

According to what I have read, there are ways you can control who sees what on your Facebook site.

Personally, I have never had a Facebook account, or one with any other sites. I think it is a silly waste of time, and a hazard to my ID and my privacy. I keep in touch with people by mail, phone, or email. Neither they or I have a problem with that.

The closest I have to a social site, is right here at WP. Other than that, I am registered at some non-social sites, so I can comment on articles. One of them is Dear Abby. The others are mostly news and political sites, and I have private home pages at a couple of sites. They are not open to view by the general public, just me. Until a week or two ago I also had a home page at Google, but they are changing their privacy policy to be more intrusive into user's lives in March, so I updated one of my other home page sites to have the same stuff on it that I had on my Google pages. When I finished doing that, I deleted my Google account. I also rarely use Google Search. I prefer to use Ixquick intstead. They don't track you.

Just ditch Facebook and use emails instead. That reduces contact from strangers, and is a lot more private. I occasionally set up blocks or filters on SPAM addresses, but usually don't have the time to fuss, so I mostly just delete them.

I really don't have any problem using email instead of a social site. There is no need to constantly tell people every little detail of your life, or to find out every little detail of their lives. Personally, I don't think doing that is healthy, and it wastes time. Just email friends and family when you really do have some real info to share.

And one more thing, stop obsessing about the number of contacts you have racked up, or what others will think about your count. The quantity of "friends" you have is not important. The quality of your friends is what matters. It is better to have one really good friend, than a million false, or casual friends.


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HisDivineMajesty
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28 Feb 2012, 12:09 am

Usually, a person's number of contacts on Facebook leads me to believe the opposite of what they want me to believe.
When someone has ten Facebook friends, five of which are family members that's fine. When someone has thirty, that's fine. Sixty is fine, too, but anything over that will lead me wondering what their standards for adding are. Usually, people with such amounts of friends just go over other people's profiles and select people they vaguely remember from classes years ago or something similar.

If someone has hundreds of friends, it's safe to assume they haven't personally met the large majority. These are usually people who play games like FarmVille or Mafia Wars, and need 'friends' to send them upgrades for those games. Some of those people might get into contact with them and become friends, but occasionally, they don't even speak any mutual languages. I know a guy who added tons of Turkish and Asian friends to give him upgrades in Mafia Wars.

Personally, my Facebook is a dreadful mess. I've generally accepted requests from anyone I have ever met, including a previous and more anonymous account created by myself that I used for a hobby before I got into it well, and some people I only know of through some hobbies of mine. I've sent requests to very few people. My profile picture is three years old and shows me wearing some basic militaria and sunglasses, Gaddafi-style. I've added some personal information in the most dry and semantic sense of the word.

But, all things considered, I respect people with fewer and more genuine Facebook friends more than those who flaunt their friendship amount above the quality of those contacts.



Alohilani
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28 Feb 2012, 12:54 am

I agree with the other comments. Don't worry too much about Facebook. It's a waste of time in my eyes. There is no point for you to worry about so-called friends because most of them will probably add you because they feel obliged to add you back and because they want to pimp their profile with many friends.

The good thing, however, I have about 200 "friends" there and I know most of them personally. But they live scattered all over the world and I would never have the energy or time to catch up with each of them by email. So I prefer reading their status updates (as stupid as they might be) to see what they've been up to.
I rarely update mine because I prefer maintaining my privacy (which is still possible to some degree). For some reason though, those people I actually consider "friends" are not on Facebook.

So, in the end, if you really want to use Facebook, just add the people you know and you feel comfortable with and ignore those who just need you to pimp their profile. A Facebook friend is just an online contact. and Facebook friendships are highly overrated. Facebook per se is overrated.
But anyway, from what I read in your post if seems to me that ditching Facebook would also be a good choice. Don't do anything just because everybody else wants you to do it.



enrico_dandolo
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28 Feb 2012, 1:24 am

I have 5 Facebook friends after a year of subscription.

You can control who sees and doesn't see your content -- individually, if you deem it fit. I'm not even registered on my own name, neither did I put my own picture (it's a Daria screenshot). There is plenty of room for prudent paranoia :)

I only use it to keep some amount of contact with some people whom I appreciate, but with whom I would lose contact otherwise, especially those who live on another continent. I don't have my family as friends, neither did I add people I still see frequently in real life. I think that is the purpose. You won't appear "socially inept", at least not to those who count. What you feel is entirely legitimate.



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28 Feb 2012, 3:20 am

Redacted



Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 7:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

Luska
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28 Feb 2012, 5:21 am

Quote:
Seriously? Why would you want to "friend" people that don't already have a handle on how "socially ept" you are/aren't. Forget collecting a thousands of Facebook "friends" that you don't actually keep up with/keep in touch with just to look popular/social (?); to me having too many just seems a bit shallow, immature and or even dumb.


I know what you mean. Unfortunately in my country there is shame for people who have few "Facebook friends". (Yes, its stupid). Unfortuantely 'few' is anything less than 200. I personally think it's a waste of time and only good for getting news about events or subscribing to important public pages for announcements etc. But for evrything else I really would want to just prefer email or other private ways of communicating. I'm always asked by people, "where's your account?". "How many FB friends do you have?"" I want to talk about our project on facebook etc.?" I think it's dumb to add acquaintances because they would see mesages by my family about personal matters, family matters, etc.

I actually have an account but my wall is closed. But still, there is a lot of social stigma in my country for people who have less than 200 friends (who are seen as "losers"). I made this thread because I HATE dealing with it.



Last edited by Luska on 28 Feb 2012, 5:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

Luska
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28 Feb 2012, 5:26 am

@modelmaker That's true.

sacrip wrote:
Just speaking for myself, if I saw someone with few friends on Facebook, my only thought would be, "That person must get a lot more accomplished than I ever do." Gaining Facebook friends is a relatively fast process. As long as you're on reasonably good terms with someone, it's rare someone will deny a friend request.

As for non-family seeing family stuff, any post you make can include or exclude whoever you like. I THINK you can also control if your family member's posts end up viewable by anybody or only certain people.


Thats what I hate about Facebook. It's privacy and security settings are difficult and super inflexible. I'm not sure how I can even make person X's post visible only to me, Y and Z but not to A and B. I really want to make sure that their posts on my wall STAY on my wall and don't end up on their wall for their own friends to see.



Last edited by Luska on 28 Feb 2012, 5:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Luska
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28 Feb 2012, 5:31 am

questor wrote:
And one more thing, stop obsessing about the number of contacts you have racked up, or what others will think about your count. The quantity of "friends" you have is not important. The quality of your friends is what matters. It is better to have one really good friend, than a million false, or casual friends.


Yes I know. Thanks. That's why Im now planning to just go create a new account just for people in my life who I think are quality friends ( even if its just 1 or 2 plus my family) . Im pretty much against the idea that people around the world are in a race to add as many casual people they barely know on facebook (and complain if a scandal or something stupid happens later).



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28 Feb 2012, 5:35 am

Many of my childhood classmates are on FB and they were the popular kids and still are popular but they sparingly use
FB and barely have 10-20 friends on it
Its ok to have less friends on FB
But just be careful of privacy and spam... and bogus profiles
There is woman following me on FB she is regularly adding likes to my pictures etc.
I came to know recently that she is the fraud colleagues wife my husbands company just kicked out
he had stolen lot of money and ran out of this city there is a police case lodged against him and his
wife is following my updates on FB


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WhoKnowsWhy
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28 Feb 2012, 10:26 am

This is one reason why I got off of facebook almost a year ago :(



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28 Feb 2012, 4:18 pm

........................



Last edited by i_wanna_blue on 01 Mar 2012, 2:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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28 Feb 2012, 4:34 pm

You can hide your friend list on facebook, so that the only friends people will see are the ones you have in common. They won't see how many friends you have.

You can also control who sees what posts, and you can group people in lists, eg have all your family in one list, and WP people in another list, and post only to that list.

But, it really isn't a big deal how many friends you have, or don't have. Or it shouldn't be a big deal. This isn't primary school.



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28 Feb 2012, 11:02 pm

Luska wrote:
I am afraid of using Facebook.

I have few to no friends in real life. I could add many acquaintances but many of these 'acquaintances" who can become "Facebook friemds" are from college (professors, classmates etc) or some other place and have no business viewing what my family, for example, writes on my wall. My facebook account looks empty. Im not comfortable letting "facebook friends"/acquaintances just view anything. I wish there was someway to control what posts Person A or Person B could view and not view on my wall.

Im thinking of starting a new account from scratch and just add people whom I can trust. it sounds good but Im afraid. It will only be my family, cousins and just a few other people and I am afraid I might have less than 60 people on my list. That's embarrassing by facebook standards. I know for a fact that 300+ friends are necessary so that you won't be judged as socially inept on Facebook.

I have been hiding the fact that I am socially inept for years and that I have always felt there was a black hole in my head when it came to talking to people.It's not shyness or a phobia. Just me "not being there".Now everyone will know when they see that i have few friends. And I might be viewed as a loser. Is it acceptable to have 60 facebook friends or less?

I want to connect with people who I have not seen in years. Im not so much afraid of having less than 60 facebook friends I just don't want to be treated differently by people.

========
Another thing. If someone writes on my facebook wall does it appear in his/her wall meaning people who I don't even know can see it ?



I kid you not, the only friends I have are from WP. The other "friends" I have are family. I no longer worry about how many friends I have, I just use it as a way to stay in touch with some people. I never get out with real people due to lack of transportation and people living so far away from me.


As for privacy, I think you can set it up to where only close friends can see. They've got it to where you got family, friends and acquaintances. If you post something you can show it to which ever group of people you want although I do wish there was more privacy as far as posting goes.


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