On 20 July, 01:19, "Arfa Daily" wrote:

I actually think that Face-ache and the other clones, are one of the most
antisocial and dangerous offerings that have come out of internet technology
in the last couple of years. I have three 'kids' all now grown up and left
the nest, and they are all ardent Face-achers. Apart from the amount of time
they waste on it, it causes a lot of trouble and ill-feeling among people
who are otherwise friends. I think this stems from several issues with
communicating in this way. First, it is very strange the way that some of
the postings are carried out using the third person, like "Fred is not very
happy today" or "Sally had a stinking rotten day at work today". This
creates an immediate detachment from a 'real' communication between people.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that many people now are
semi-illiterate, and use wrong words, in wrong contexts, and often with
wrong grammar. In a face to face conversation, they get away with this,
because the person that they are talking to 'understands' the true intent
because there are visual and implied cues from the facial expressions and
audible intonation applied to the words. When these same words are typed,
however, it becomes very easy to misinterpret the real intended meaning,
which may well have been intended to be a 'throw away' comment, or a
humourous *or tongue-in-cheek one. This can then lead to heated exchanges -
like mini flame wars - that often result in ended friendships, or awkward
standoffs. I have seen it time and again when my daughters have been
involved. When you ask them what is going on, and they read out what has
been said in these exchanges, very often with the benefit of being detached
from the situation, you can understand what the unfortunate person at the
butt end of one of these exchanges was trying to say in their original post,
before it got misunderstood, and out of hand.

I certainly won't be joining any of these sites anytime soon. To be honest,
I fail to see the point of having a presence on them, except as a place to
gossip. I can't understand what the attraction is of sharing personal
information about what sort of a day you've had, and what you are doing with
your life, to all and sundry. Accepted, you can set some sort of privacy
that only makes you visible to selected people, but what's the point of that
even ? You might as well write an email each night to a copy-list of people

Sadly, I think you've just spent several minutes typing out something
which most younger people (and probably most _people_ in 20+ years
time) would simply read as "I'm old - there's this new thing - I don't
get it - it must be bad".

This is pretty much what "older" people have been saying about _any_
new thing for as long as people have been saying anything!

I don't say this to be rude or cruel. I catch myself saying similar
things quite often, and I don't think I'm old! But the world moves on.
This is the future. New generations will find it just as exciting as
you/we once found radio, or television, or home computers, etc. And
then they'll grow up and look back on "good old facebook", decrying
whatever the new "new thing" is.

Whatever _is_ bad about it will get sorted out. The sky won't fall.
People will enjoy it for a while, and maybe move on. Those that are
around will probably judge that the world was a slightly better place
because of it.

Those that are already old will still claim the world was a better
place when _they_ were young. Pre-NHS. With bombs dropping on them.
Poverty. Starvation. But they were happy days etc.

Cheers,
David.