[David Mason]

To the agora!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Actually I have tried all the settings. Multiple times.

They worked initially until a change came along, and then I would update and they would work. Now they don't and I can't make them.

FWIW I spent seventeen years of my life working for a computer mfg as translations manger and other posts writing technical manuals on hardware, software, applications (pre-app). I could take my own computers apart and reassemble them and I used DOS to customize their pre-Windows guts. Later in my own business, for decades, I have written for innovator clients about technological products still in development ranging from control of nuclear power plants to to supercomputers. One would think, wouldn't one, that it shouldn't be too hard for me to understand FB and make it work as I wish it too.

I don't use my FB to sell books. I don't have any.

And it may be old-fashioned, but the people who are my FB friends are people with whom I would be delighted to sit down to a delicious meal and converse.

[Janice D. Soderling]

PS Hey Quincy, Multiple Likes to your Oatmeal post above.

[Roger Slater]

I'd be delighted to sit down to a delicious meal and converse with any number of people here at Eratosphere, but that hardly constitutes an argument against Eratosphere. On the contrary, it's an argument for it. It shows that we can use social media -- and the Sphere is indeed social media -- to get to know people we like well enough to wish to know in person, while not being deprived of knowing them and interacting with them simply because in many cases it is not practical for us to have dinner together.

I'm not saying anyone "should" use Facebook who doesn't want to use it. It may not be for everyone. I've never been a fan of Twitter, though millions of people make it a constant part of their lives. What bothers me a bit is when people (and I'm not speaking of anyone in particular) justify their decision not to do Facebook with generalizations that subtly (or not so subtly) contain judgments that are dismissive of those who do, often extolling their own superior humanity for preferring (as if others don't) actual human friends and contacts, or dismissing what they perceive to be the unworthy level of inane chatter that they themselves would never tolerate.

It's analogous to how many people (and I'm not speaking of anyone in particular) react to e-books. I'm not saying anyone who doesn't want to read e-books ought to do so, but what I resent is that some people feel it necessary to justify their decision not to read e-books in self-serving terms that, once again, extol their own superiority for preferring a purer reading experience, or "loving books" more than the people who stoop to read them electronically, etc.

I suppose there's a lot of societal or peer pressure to use Facebook or read e-books, etc., and the reluctant minority may feel besieged or criticized to the point that they are tempted to fight back. But when someone (no one here, of course) makes a comment that essentially boils down to "I do not use Facebook because I have a superior sensibility, I like people more, and my life is too busy with other wonderful things to spare the time," I can't help thinking that the Facebook users in the room have been criticized at least a little bit.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Thank-you, Roger.

Nemo

[Allen Tice]

Welcome to the world of cognitive dissonance reduction. Some social psychologists, starting with Leon Festinger, have speculated that when people have to make choices for or against some controversial action, they subsequently intensify the intensity of their committment by defending it more strongly than their previous doubts would have suggested. This is a theorized method of reducing any mental discomfort that might arise when they meet another person, regardless of whether that person might agree with them or not. If true, this analysis helps explain a lot of things we see every day, and might be a pathway to understanding fanaticism.

[Pedro Poitevin]

I'm more active on Facebook than I should be (and I think it has its uses!), but I don't hold it in high regard. Facebook is where you find the people you went to high school with. Twitter is where you find the people you would have liked to go to high school with. The constraints of Twitter invite both inanity and wit, and you follow the latter and unfollow the former. If you're good at it, you find yourself discovering talented, interesting people, and if you get lucky others might even discover you.

[Paul Stevens]

Spot on, Roger! I'm always amazed when people who habitually use the e-lit/social medium of the Sphere (often those who also regularly publish in online journals), then go on to rubbish e-books and Facebook as vulgarly electronic or wotevz, and to represent themselves as romantically old-fashioned paper-and-ink face-to-physical-face serious traditionalists. And to post that self-representation on an online forum!

[Paul Stevens]

Rather like sitting in a pub with a pint in your hand and a table full of empties in front, telling the world you're a tee-totaller.

[Allen Tice]

Right (hiccup!) you (hiccup, belch) are (hiccup!)!

I either bake my poems into bricks or carve my poems on marble like The Deeds of the Deified Augustus were carved, which still remain in Greek and Latin forms long after (hic) the papyrus scrolls (belch) and parchment (barf) codices (more beer, here) rotted to pre-electronic (urp) dust.