There is also the event calendar/birthday reminder. People are like "without Facebook, how would we remember birthdays or know what events are happening?" My answer was, we did before. We had other ways of catching up, of keeping in touch, of remembering important dates. Their answer: "Did we really?"
YES WE REALLY. IT'S CALLED A PAPER CALENDAR. WTF?! THAT'S WHAT I USE! (And my paper calendar can't be hacked and will not gush my secrets for ad revenue.)
I know I had this huge "EVERYONE WILL LEAVE ME" worry when I left tumblr but gee, funny story, when folks really want to hang out with you, they find ways to make it happen! I've had folks follow me over three or four platforms, bless 'em. Corporations like Facebook can try to hold our friends hostage, but in my opinion, if someone is unwilling to interact with me EXCEPT through that platform... maybe we're not actually friends. Maybe we're just acquaintances on a site, and the site is facilitating the illusion of friendship. (Facebook likes to act like it's selling friendship. It's not. It's selling the APPEARANCE of friendship to its userbase, and then selling said userbase.)
(Also, RE: IM platform, I've been using Trillian and it's been working pretty great! It fulfills my needs RE: blind-friendly, opt-in local auto-logging, and custom status messages are nice).
Also, DeviantArt had hordes of randos who'd search for users' birthdays, JUST so they could leave happy birthday messages to online strangers! That's a social norm that I kinda miss.
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There is also the event calendar/birthday reminder. People are like "without Facebook, how would we remember birthdays or know what events are happening?" My answer was, we did before. We had other ways of catching up, of keeping in touch, of remembering important dates. Their answer: "Did we really?"
YES WE REALLY. IT'S CALLED A PAPER CALENDAR. WTF?! THAT'S WHAT I USE! (And my paper calendar can't be hacked and will not gush my secrets for ad revenue.)
I know I had this huge "EVERYONE WILL LEAVE ME" worry when I left tumblr but gee, funny story, when folks really want to hang out with you, they find ways to make it happen! I've had folks follow me over three or four platforms, bless 'em. Corporations like Facebook can try to hold our friends hostage, but in my opinion, if someone is unwilling to interact with me EXCEPT through that platform... maybe we're not actually friends. Maybe we're just acquaintances on a site, and the site is facilitating the illusion of friendship. (Facebook likes to act like it's selling friendship. It's not. It's selling the APPEARANCE of friendship to its userbase, and then selling said userbase.)
(Also, RE: IM platform, I've been using Trillian and it's been working pretty great! It fulfills my needs RE: blind-friendly, opt-in local auto-logging, and custom status messages are nice).
Also, DeviantArt had hordes of randos who'd search for users' birthdays, JUST so they could leave happy birthday messages to online strangers! That's a social norm that I kinda miss.