Facebook

Is Facebook worth it?

Sure, it is a way to keep in touch with people. Find out what they're thinking, doing, or planning. For a fairly introverted person like me it has the advantage that I don't actually have to talk to them to find this stuff out.

Occasionally I use it to ask for advice. Often I even get useful advice that way.

But the signal-to-noise ratio is very low. Despite my efforts to use FB's filters, I mostly see junk. Poorly written and/or ignorant political posturing (including plenty from people nominally on 'my side' of issues) seems to be the dominant life form even now that the election is over.

I've considered a merciless pruning of my friend list (do I really care what someone I haven't seen since high school is doing? Not really)... but that would be a lot of work. It doesn't help that I've now got a bunch of SCA folks friended; often I don't remember their legal names. Further complicated by friends with similar names, and the fact that no one seems to use a straight face shot of themselves as their profile pic. I'm very afraid of deleting someone because I don't recognize their name or profile pic only to find I've deleted my Baron.

A much easier solution is just to stop visiting (perhaps deleting my account, perhaps not). Then, however, I lose what little signal I was getting. Along with the cute cat pictures - they probably don't count as 'signal', but they're fun.