People getting in touch out of the blue

i dont have my real name on facebook prescisely to avoid this kind of thing from ever happening to me.

Never had anyone I've fallen out with or anything get in touch with me (for whatever reason ...) but I still hated the way facebook would through up all these old faces. People I barely knew, or people I knew but didn't feel the pressing need to keep in contact with, and you end up just accepting their friend requests out of politeness and end up with a profile full of information about a load of semi-acquaintances you knew ten years ago telling you about their crazy trip to the pub last weekend. Fuck off. It's the new panopticon that shit. Everybody monitoring each other, operating in the same vague space without ever really coming into contact with each other. A few people who requested me in this way I ended up messaging them directly just to put them on the spot. Never any response. Glad I got rid of my facebook, though I do sometimes feel a bit isolated. Think that's just me though.

To answer your question then, people are rubbish.

Infact I remember a girl from my primary school added me (she's filled out btw ) and I accepted. Walked past her on my street a couple of weeks later and she just sort of walked past me. I attempted a little nod at least... Nada. Whats the point?

And yeah, I find facebook death pages so inappropriate. Like those ones you see where some young cunt has died 'Gud by baby u wil always b luvd xx'. Cheers for that comment you raging fucking cretin.

grizzleb said:

People I barely knew, or people I knew but didn't feel the pressing need to keep in contact with, and you end up just accepting their friend requests out of politeness and end up with a profile full of information about a load of semi-acquaintances you knew ten years ago telling you about their crazy trip to the pub last weekend. Fuck off.

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Exactly - it's not so bad when it's people you were good mates with at school or something, it can even be quite cool to get in touch again if you're not just doing it for the sake of it - but so often it's people you weren't even that good friends with in the first place. And it's invariably people like that who bombard everyone they know with invites to Pirate Maffia Farm and 'Which root vegetable are you?' and all that shite.

grizzleb said:

And yeah, I find facebook death pages so inappropriate. Like those ones you see where some young cunt has died 'Gud by baby u wil always b luvd xx'. Cheers for that comment you raging fucking cretin.

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Whenever there's a dead kid in the news it's always the horrific unEnglish the Facebook tributes are written in that I find the most depressing aspect.

i just don't add or accept friend request from people that i was never really friends or those i don't want to be friends with now. easy.

while we're on the subject of irritating and depressing facebook behaviour though - one of my oldest friends had a baby last year and has made a facebook profile for the fucking child. I get these cringeworthy status updates coming up in my feed like "DADDY, I CAN HAZ NEW TOOTH!". I don't know if it's my mate or his wife writing these, but either way it does my fucking head in and it takes a lot of will-power not to write a really snarky comment underneath.

A friend of mine knew this guy a few years ago who maybe has Asperger's or something, or perhaps is just a collossal weirdo and dickhead, who used Facebook to essentially microblog his mother's cancer and eventual death. Just utterly, utterly incredible. I'll ask him about it again, there were some real (um) 'gems'. :slanted:

Start sending the 'kid' creepy private messages, that should shut the daft bastard up...

Lol, i wish i could do that... new parents get a bit tetchy if you slag off their child though, sadly. you have to act like a cooing prat or else they think you're cold and moody. I mean I am quite cold and moody, but not so cold as to post my mate's baby son's facebook page on the internet and invite people to write abuse to him.

Then act like the kid is cool shit but be all like, "Just between you and me, I never liked your old man, he's a total dick..."

Edit: this calls for Bill Hicks - YOUR CHILD IS NOT SPECIAL! "If childbirth is a miracle, the so's eatin' a hamburger and havin' a turd come outta your ass."

also somewhat annoying: couples who replace their profile photo with ones of the child at various stages of development. umm, excuse me, but you (the parent) still have your own identity, not everything needs to be taken over by the child. and i agreed to be friends with you, not your always-soooo-cute baby son or daughter. despite the wonders of being a parent, you still have an ability to relate to other adults about non-parental things!

"i'll do it for you - just post the link!"

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Beat me to it.

"Everybody monitoring each other, operating in the same vague space without ever really coming into contact with each other."

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I guess I'm weird but I'm actually quite liking this aspect of it. Before I only used facebook to speak to personal friends but recently, as I've been promoting a couple of clubs and stuff, I've decided it's best to have as many contacts as possible and I've started adding people willy-nilly and it's totally changed its function as far as I'm concerned. One upshot of this is the creation of this weird "friendspace" - which I find endlessly fascinating. Or at least I do at the moment.
Also, got contacted by a school acquaintance the other day, I accepted it 'cause it basically makes no difference to me, I'll get the odd ghost of a reminder about him every now and again I suppose but who cares, it's just like hearing my mum gossiping with other mums about people from my local village. Would be a bit more annoying if he actually contacted me directly and realised what a loser I am.
One guy with the same name as me added me and I accepted it, I looked at his profile and he had like fifteen friends with the same name. Dunno why but that kind of stupidity kind of makes me laugh although I wouldn't want to get too heavily involved in it to be honest.
The person to speak to about blasts from the pasts is DannyL - I don't think he'll mind me saying that one guy he'd barely been friends with in the first place and who he hadn't seen for ages after that contacted him to say that he'd just got out of jail after a ten stretch (or something) and was looking to get in touch with all his old friends. He's had some other good ones as well.

Well yeah, FB really comes into its own when you're trying to organise big social things like parties because it's clearly fuckloads easier than ringing round or sending emails, and you can keep track of who's coming, who hasn't made their mind up and all that. Probably the best thing about it. Useful too if you fanatically follow whatever band, club, festival and so on and want to be the first to know about new dates or get tickets, I suppose.

Say what you like about Facebook but it's a good topic of conversation

i think you should all post links to your profile so i can match names to faces.