Week of Blogging - Day 4

Facebook, Then and Now

Like many people, I have had a love-hate relationship with social media. It has its uses, but also plenty of annoyances and absurdities. I joined Facebook back in 2005, which doesn't quite make me an early-adopter, but still one of older members. As an interesting side note, I was actually forced to join by a few friends of mine who sat me down in front of a computer and made me create an account. Back then Facebook was still young and fairly innocent, with only a few features and a simple design. The novelty of social networking was undeniable at the time, and for me it served a useful purpose in keeping touch with friends from high school and college as well as a means of sharing photos. No longer did you have to wait until the 10-year high school reunion to see what other people were up to; with Facebook you now had a reunion almost every day. This of course begs the question, are high school reunions now obsolete?

One of my favorite things from the early days of Facebook were the groups. Back then it seemed most of the groups being created were lighthearted, and I enthusiastically joined a number of them. One of my favorites was a group titled "The most productive thing I did today was create a group on Facebook." The cover photo for the group was a shirtless guy on a recliner holding a N64 controller. Some other notable ones included the Coalition Against Uggs And Big Square Sunglasses, Ninjas for Jesus, The Infinite Gloriousness That Is Undeniably Captain Falcon, I'd Mess With Texas, Raptor Awareness, and In-N-Out Lovers.

Over time, however, things changed. Facebook opened up to more than just college students, which was inevitable (and not a bad thing at all), but it meant Facebook lost that feeling of being somewhat like a club. Groups and individuals got more politicized (again, not necessarily a bad thing) which meant that Facebook increasingly became a platform for spewing bile at others. More features were added and the complexity of Facebook steadily increased over time, which I imagine some people liked, but I personally found many of these things as just more ways to hand over personal information to marketers. For better or for worse, Facebook has grown up and left those innocent days of youth behind.

As Facebook has changed, so has my account on it. I only have about 50 friends these days, and from time to time I purge people that I don't talk to anymore. I've left nearly all my groups and my profile information is now bare-bones. It's been well over a year since I last uploaded a photo album, and my profile photo, which I used to change every three months or so, has not been changed since 2012. There have been several times where I seriously considered shutting down my account, but for now Facebook still has just enough value for me to stick with it. How long that will last, I cannot say.