Aug 7 - Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.'

Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.'
144 comments, 44 called-out



The term “Crackberry” seems silly today — and not just because consumers OD’ed on Blackberry and moved on to iDealers. The term arose in an earlier “aughts” time when Blackberry dominated the smartphone market and lawyers and execs were nearly the only ones who had them, due to their need to be able to respond to email immediately. Things have changed. Now we all need to be able to respond to email immediately. And to tweet. And to instantly share our photos on Facebook. We’re all addicted to technology now, and not just to the Blackberry. We’re “addicted” to our iPhones, and Facebook, and Twitter, and Android, and Pinterest, and iPads, and Word with Friends, and fill-in-the-blank-with-your-digital-dope-of-choice.

The sudden and dramatic advent of social-media-enabling technologies into our lives seems to be causing some mid-digital-life crises. Not only has Silicon Valley developed a guilty conscience about addicting us to screens, we the users are starting to question how technology is changing us: making us fat, making us unhealthy, making us depressed, making us lonely, making us narcissistic, and making us waste time worrying about whether it’s making us fat, unhealthy, depressed, narcissistic and/or lonely. That’s leading some users to consider abandoning the whole enterprise. My colleague Haydn Shaughnessy gave up his smartphone last year. Now, inspired by the example of former Facebooker Katherine Losse, he’s considering giving up Facebook.

I am writing with some words of caution. I used to say that “if you’re not on Facebook, it’s possible you don’t actually exist.” I think it’s time to update that, courtesy of Slashdot: Facebook abstainers will be labeled suspicious.
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Slashdot flagged a German news story in which an expert noted that mass murkers Anders Breivik and James Holmes both lacked much of a social media presence, leading to the conclusion, in Slashdot’s phrasing, that “not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murker.”

That’s a tad extreme, but I’m seeing the suggestion more and more often that a missing Facebook account raises red flags. After a woman found out via Facebook that a man who’d ‘poked’ her in real life had a long term girlfriend, she turned to digital manners advice givers Farhad Manjoo and Emily Yoffe of Slate to ask whether she should tell the girlfriend. They said she should and then went on a digression about transparent romances in the age of Facebook:

Farhad: I think we’ve mentioned it before that if you are going out with someone and they don’t have a Facebook profile, you should be suspicious.

Emily: Wait a minute. You may have mentioned that.

Farhad: I think I’ve recommended that. You know why, though? Imagine if this guy didn’t have a Facebook profile. That’s why. You should be suspicious of someone who is not making your relationship known publicly on a site like Facebook. I’m going to go on record with that.

Emily: I’m fine with people not having a Facebook page if they don’t want one. However, I think you’re right. If you’re of a certain age and you meet someone who you are about to go to bed with, and that person doesn’t have a Facebook page, you may be getting a false name. It could be some kind of red flag.

via Transcript: Facebook stalker: Should I tell a cheating guy’s girlfriend that we hooked up? – Slate Magazine.

It’s not just love seekers who worry about what the lack of a Facebook account means. Anecdotally, I’ve heard both job seekers and employers wonder aloud about what it means if a job candidate doesn’t have a Facebook account. Does it mean they deactivated it because it was full of red flags? Are they hiding something?

The idea that a Facebook resister is a potential mass murker, flaky employee, and/or person who struggles with fidelity is obviously flawed. There are people who choose not to be Facebookers for myriad non-psychopathic reasons: because they find it too addictive, or because they hold their privacy dear, or because they don’t actually want to know what their old high school buddies are up to. My own boyfriend isn’t on Facebook and I don’t hold it against him (too much).

But it does seem that increasingly, it’s expected that everyone is on Facebook in some capacity, and that a negative[..]umption is starting to arise about those who reject the Big Blue Giant’s siren call. Continuing to navigate life without having this digital form of identification may be like trying to get into a bar without a driver’s license.

Case in point: Katherine Losse, the ex-Facebook employee that quit the company and the social network after cashing in her stock options, and who inspired my colleague to consider UnFacebooking, couldn’t stay off Facebook for long. She wound up opening a new account.

“You can’t get away from it. It’s everything. It’s everywhere,” she told the Washington Post. “The moment we’re in now is about trying to deal with all this technology rather than rejecting it, because obviously we can’t reject it entirely.”

Well, you can, but it might lead to your being rejected down the line too.

* Updated August 7 to include some reasons why a person might choose not to be on Facebook, beyond being too busy planning commando attacks.


Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.' - Forbes

I don't have a Facebook. It's because what I do, who I know, what I'm eating, and where I'm at is nobody's !!in business. People who matter will know those details without the help of Facebook.

I've thought about closing my facebook. But !! is so intertwined in it, it's getting ridiculous.

I mean I wouldn't have even been invited to my 10yr HS reunion if I wasn't on FB because that's how they found and sent out invites to everyone.

Everybody I know seems to post events on FB and if you don't RSVP via FB, then they don't know you're coming.

It sucks and hopefully there will be a way out of it. But I fear that until I wife up my girl, move to the mountains, start growing my own food and raisin my own chickens, will I ever be able to get away from FB totally.[pic]

[pic] !! it, yolo !!

I couldn't rock with facebook for the simple fact that everything I ever say or some one posts sits on a wall for the world to see forever, niccas actually had,to be faithful, I rocks with twitter doe [pic]

[pic] [pic]

I had a Facebook for 2 months and it was just ppl whining and !!ing and posting stupid pics every day so I closed that !! and because I didn't wanna have my mugshot tagged for a dwi

i dont have one, i de-activated it about a year ago. I also wonder if it effects me for good or bad...[pic]

the problem is that deactivating it doesnt actually delete it

I took my pictures, my info, and all my other !! off when I found out they was selling my data to government, and corps. My life is not for sale without breaking me off a piece of the facebook pie.
And I dont care about the next man status, what they doing or not doing if aint got nothing to do with me making $$$. Known fact that feds, college, and people who control your your faith in this world watching that bull!! facebook. Wait for you to F up so the whole world can see into your life a sitecom.

I don't have one. I have had one but NEVER posted anything on it. I don't believe in it. I could sniff out facebook's negative !! before it even got popular.

You gotta have a facebook and twitter, even if you don't use it. It's unfortunately the way of the world now <sigh>

I don't even use facebook or twitter but once a quarter, but like dude said above, if you don't have them, you're gonna miss out on parties/reunions and !!. !!, one of my professors created a facebook group that students HAD to use in order to get discussion points. Facebook is ubiquitous nowadays

So wait having a FB to catch up with 'friends', friends I'll probably never see or sit down with again is my way of being hip to the scene?

Being on FB will probably propel to be a mass murk with all of the stupidity you encounter.

I said it before and I'll say it again facebook is for losers
BX Byatch

I need a facebook account for my job [pic]

Plus, I pull mad hoes from facebook, not even gonna lie. I'm just careful with it [pic]

closed my !! last year

haha that facebook !! is something else aint it [pic]

[pic] the gift and the curse hahaha

So true [pic]

ok cupid......look it up [pic]