Facebook hassle

[steveeeeeeeee]

My Facebook activity has slowed over the past year, to the point where I rarely post personal information or photos and mainly share stuff I find interesting. I'll comment on others' posts, but the vital importance Facebook carries in recording the life events of many of its global users is quite off-putting. I'm more your funny-photos-of-cats style of social media user. I will confess, I like photos of food (in particular, DD's excellent mystery breakfast series).

However, this week I've been subjected to Facebook at its worst via a local history Facebook group I was joined to (left it this morning). The founders of the group started it with some great photos and facts relating to the history of my local area. But over the past couple of years the comments section of the group has been mostly filled with tirades by people who once lived in the area complaining about the changes caused by immigrants. The subject of my local market is usually the most contested and in the past, I've pointed out that I like the changes to the local market and the fact that immigrants have kept it going. Normally, I get a couple of comments disagreeing with me, but in the latest thread I pointed out that some people were being small-minded and xenophobic, which led to a barrage of personal abuse both on the thread and through messenger.

So, I've left the group, something I should have done ages ago. One of the posters who got most personal and abusive is actually a young relative of a friend of my mum's, who moved out of the local area over a decade ago. Unsure whether I should mention it to her?

But overall, I'm really starting to fall out of love with Facebook. It was such a great tool when I lived abroad for keeping in touch with old friends, but now I'm back in the UK, I tend to text them or share stupid photos on Instagram with them. The whole political aspect of Facebook is horribly divisive, because the pack mentality prevents any alternative voices from being aired within the selective groups. And being on the end of Facebook abuse by strangers is really unpleasant.

[NHH]

Every local history group I've been on (3 so far) goes the same way. Slowly joined by lots of people who start with nostalgia, end up lamenting where it all went wrong, and conclude that it's variously a mixture of blow ins, immigrants, the bastard council and every party other than the Conservative Party. This is usually stirred up by some relatively arch UKIP types (or worse) who have a ocal connection to the area that trumps most things, who are joined by a load of others who are generally onside, alongside a larger number who are generally too dumb to see what's happening (the kind of people who get confused about spaces and commas).

[WOM]

Yup. I belong to two: the community where I grew up and still have ties, and the one where I live now. The former is the worst, as it's older, more affluent and much, much whiter. In short, everything used to be much better, and all the issues now are caused by 'them'. I sometimes speak up, but you can't convince old racist boneheads of much.

[WOM]

I got myself into trouble once with sarcasm. Someone tried to connect some teenagers tipping over patio furniture with a 'day spa' (rub and tug) featuring European Ladies that had opened about 5km away.
I said it was well known that Polish sex trade workers dealt with their frustrations by tipping over lawn chairs.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Every local history group I've been on (3 so far) goes the same way. Slowly joined by lots of people who start with nostalgia, end up lamenting where it all went wrong, and conclude that it's variously a mixture of blow ins, immigrants, the bastard council and every party other than the Conservative Party. This is usually stirred up by some relatively arch UKIP types (or worse) who have a ocal connection to the area that trumps most things, who are joined by a load of others who are generally onside, alongside a larger number who are generally too dumb to see what's happening (the kind of people who get confused about spaces and commas).

Wow, that is exactly how this group has panned out. What really gets my goat is that those who do the complaining no longer live in the area. Then, due to the fact I can spell, don't write all caps, use commas etc, they think I'm a newcomer to the area. I seem to get more aggressive replies from the women of this group, rather than men, who are equally as xenophobic but will usually concede some agreement with my point of view. I pointed out to one female poster, who doubted my local credentials that I used to play football with her brother-in-law when I was a kid and she went mental, accusing me of stalking her profile. I did check who she was friends with, to be fair.

[NHH]

Yes. The one for my home town was full of Costa del Kipper fucktards fulminating without a hint of irony. The internet used to be good, before everyone used it, and made it as shit as everywhere else, only this time with algorithms

[diggedy derek]

I will confess, I like photos of food (in particular, DD's excellent mystery breakfast series).

Oh hey, that's really nice of you!

It's a paradox of Facebook that as it grows, it seems that people use it more – perhaps finding more and more features or ways of interacting they can waste time with. But yes, my affection for it is very limited also. I'd find it hard not to use now and again, but I feel no great attachment to it, less so than Twitter.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Twitter seems to be full of people saying "The f*cking state of this" to posts by Gary Lineker, I've never been able to truly embrace it. However, it's great for finding out about pubs and non-league football.

I really like Instagram. It's silly, creative and simple, yet genuinely enlightening and informative. Most importantly, I spend no more than 4 or 5 minutes on it a day and I haven't come across the small minded xenophobes who pollute Facebook. Even my f*cking auntie shares Britain First posts, it just seems like you can't escape the c*ntery which was once well hidden.

[Toby Gymshorts]

I binned off Facebook (well, largely, I sometimes post when I need to pull a quick brain fart) for precisely these reasons. People, friends, family who you feel a connection to out themselves as BF / kipper types and it's all just so dispiriting.

[Snake Plissken]

Facebook is best treated as a write-only medium.

[G-Man]

I co-founded a local history group for my German hometown, mainly as a vehicle for old photos. It has 8175 members, as of today. A few times right-wingers have tried their crap and the co-admin and I shot that shit down pretty quickly. We have none of these problems now. Perhaps our numbers would stand at 8500 now if we hadn't thrown the troublemakers out. It's down to admins to set the tone.

[Various Artist]

What really gets my goat is that those who do the complaining no longer live in the area.

Oh man, this is the most acutely relatable bit of all, stev9e.

I've basically stopped using Facebook for the last few years as on the macro level I found its ever-growing global reach troublingly all-encompassing, and on the everyday level I just found it too depressing. Several people I know locally have expressed surprise when I confess ignorance of stuff going on on the local history FB group – which seems to have become basically the all-purpose area FB group, full stop, at some point when I wasn't looking. Contrary to their default position, I've never had the faintest interest in joining it, not least due to how it's devolved into a one-stop gossip shop.

I've glanced at it probably not even a handful of times, and the overriding impression that I took away from even a brief viewing was exactly what you stated above. I was mildly amazed (though, of course, I really shouldn't have been) how many comments there were from people bitching and moaning about the present state of the place who hadn't actually set foot here for maybe 20, 30, 40 years or more. I simply cannot see how anyone has a leg to stand on, ranting on about the council/schools/demographics/whatever of somewhere they haven't lived for decades as though it somehow affects them personally.

[My Name Is Ian]

I had a similar issue from the opposite end of the spectrum with political Facebook groups. I joined a bunch after Brexit because I though that might be a decent start towards some form of activism, but ended up quitting them all because being a white, cis-gendered male was generally frowned upon*. Upon leaving the last of them, it occurred to me that this was the final time I'll bother. Might as well just sit back and wallow in my privilege.

*And yes, of course I get that while, cis-gendered men are responsible for more than their fair share of the terrible in the world. But when these group are taking over your timeline and you're being helpfully reminded about sixty or seventy times a day that you're essentially vermin at a time when your marriage is collapsing and you generally feel like ending it all anyway, it's probably best to just step away.

[Patrick Thistle]

Someone messaged me to beg sponsorship for his ultra marathon in Israel he's doing to raise funds for his religious proselytisation charity.

I need to cull my friends list.

[WOM]

An exercism?

[anton pulisov]

You people are so behind the times. I deleted Facebook in 2010.

[Gangster Octopus]

So what've we all been using since then?

[ursus arctos]

None of us ever signed up

[San Bernardhinault]

I still find it borderline essential for staying in touch with my diaspora of friends who live in far flung places so we can't just meet up for drinks to find out what we've all been up to.

But it's getting less and less so - the consequences of which will be very sad as I will begin to disconnect from friends in Britain or New Zealand or wherever.

Its shift to being swamped by people sharing political and newsy bullshit (even stuff I agree with) has just made it so much more irritating to engage with, requires me to skip over the 80% of the content that's just re-posted shares of tired memes or angry news articles to find the actual Social Network stuff to keep me in contact with my network of people I actually know tell me what they've been doing socially.

I know some despise the "this is my cat", "this is where I ran today", "this is what I ate for dinner", "this is where I'm on my hols" stuff, but that's really what I like about it.

[My Name Is Ian]

It increasingly feels to me as though news organisations are just pumping out as many Facebook posts as they can in order to take over timelines. I seem to spend a lot of time clicking "like" on a media organisation's page and then unfollowing it two or three days later because it just suffocates everything else.

[ursus arctos]

They are, because the metrics are telling them that nothing else drives engagement as effectively.

[My Name Is Ian]

Well, it drives "pissing me off" efficiently.

[San Bernardhinault]

It does feel that they're about to kill their golden-egg laying goose by making the platform so dominated by this shit that nobody will use it any more. It's a form of the tragedy of the commons (somewhat stretching the meaning of the word tragedy, admittedly), where it's very effective is about 20% of your feed is targeted content, yet you remain engaged by the rest of your feed; but if 90% of your feed is this you just stop engaging completely. But there's no incentive for any one organisation to produce less of this crap when their competitors aren't.

[ursus arctos]

We can all hope

[Ginger Yellow]

One of the upsides of being an anti-social bastard is that I don't have any of this Facebook and Twitter hassle.