Thoughts on Facebook
I hate Facebook. That’s right, I hate it, but I still use it, it is compulsive, compelling, addictive, it is pointless, waste of time, redundant, everyone uses it and everyone wants to be your friend. It has pointless add-on applications and a ridiculous “Poke” feature that once you poke someone you can’t stop. Currently I am a couple of weeks in sending Pokes to Azhar Usman as we send pokes back and forth, if someone pokes you, you just have to poke back, it’s crazy! I got an idea, if someone knows how to develop apps for Facebook, how about setting up a similar Poke feature but for duahs? You can pick from a number of “May Allah bless/increase/heal/etc…? you” or other such similar phrases, also phrases like “Eid mubarak” and the like.
The other thing I notice is that most things you do on Facebook are public, wall-to-walls, comments on photos and there is much room for potential embarrassment. The nature of this system and the networks you can form, consist of all sorts of people from all persuasions some people are friends, others acquaintences and then there are strangers, all these are designated as “friends”, only a handful of people on my FB account are actually friends others are total strangers that happen to know me or of me, or know me through someone else but they are not really “friends” in the true sense of the word. In addition, you have an extended circle of acquaintances from college, uni, work and elsewhere and sometimes, whilst these people are perfectly OK on a personal level, they may have somethings on their FB page that may be risqu? or in appropriate and because they are on your contact list people may make you guilty by association!
I don’t like FB but it does have its uses in keeping in touch with people and posting messages to groups of people and the like, the danger is getting addicted to it.
6 thoughts on “Thoughts on Facebook”
Salaams. As Sheikh Nuh said last year, “Get your face off of Facebook!”
I have ‘hidden’ my friends from my friends as I seem to know people who have fell out :-/ and don’t wish to encourage bad feelings between them. There is a lot of potential to be piggy-in-the-middle in someone else’s bad relationships :-/
Messages can be misinterpreted.. Intentions whilst posting messages are also very important. Why do we post what we do? Is it for that person or is it for others?
I don’t like the current idea of ‘People you may know’ as it means that my thumbnail may be shown on someone else’s homepage.. makes me wonder why on earth did I decide to make my profile hidden?!
Thanks to God Almighty the interface is aweful to use and this has meant that I use FB even less than before.
BLAH
I do pretty much agree with you on all of this. I have deactivated my account on more than one occasion, because of questioning this whole ‘public communication thing’, but then came back, as one or other of my gazillion cousins around the world made complaints!
The other problem for me is that while I don’t find it addictive (I only really open the page in response to a message or wall post), I do think it can fill what I can only describe as a ‘social void’ or feeling of isolation that occurs for folks like me who work on their own on their laptops for much of the time. Every so often, I find I need a breather from intellectual concentration, and FB, and even DP, are there to facilitate ‘altenative conversations’!!!
I do have very high privacy settings on my account though, which I update regularly. More than half of my ‘friends’ can’t see my profile at all, except work info and a couple of other minor things. I recommend that people use it an as savvy a way as they are able, because the default privacy settings are really shoddy.
Ma’a salama, Fozia
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
I’m not fond of it either, but since so many of the old bloggers are disappearing and going to Facebook, where they can control who reads what they write rather than sharing it with everyone, I stay on it for the time being. I hate the *new* Facebook, which doesn’t load the old page when you press the “Back” button; it just refreshes the page and then starts loading! How stupid.
Emel magazine had a feature on an “Islamic” Facebook type site called Muxlim.com; it might be worth taking a look. Perhaps you want to keep your Muslim friends separate from your others.
Asalaam Alaikum Brother Mas’ud.
I agree Facebook can be annoying, but at the same time quite addictive. I would like to use it just to keep in touch with friends but I just end up using it for things that I don’t need.
You can restrict how much you make public and you don’t have to poke back people or accept any of their requests (Albeit I don’t know you personally yet I added you as a friend and you accepted 😛 ). I currently have 6 friend requests, 2 event invitations, 1 “human gift request”, 5 “buy your friends requests, and 191 other requests!
I just ignore them, I can’t be bothered with them! Though it is good for ISoc and MSAs to make people aware of events on campuses and bring up attendance. It also keeps in me touch with new Radical Middle Way events going on.
Salams. 🙂 Haha, I’m one of the people you’ve poked back! btw, I deactivated my FB this morn, however it’s temporary. Don’t worry I’ll be back in about a month inshallah. I simply need a break; besides I’ll be real busy until mid-December. Yeah.. the idea of being on other folks “people you may know list” is a bit disturbing to me as well. A bunch of folks have found me that way. And many Muslim men I don’t even know and don’t have on my friends list have sent me private messages telling me they like my display pic and would like to get to know me. One recently even included their phone number and told me he longed to hear my voice. I went to his page and it said he’s engaged! and the guy actually works for a prominent Islamic Institution in Egypt! I don’t know what’s up with that. I plan to change my display pic when I get back on FB I think it’s just like the internet in general – it depends how you use it … I’ve met a few good folks on FB. .. including yourself. haha, thought I’d throw that in there.