Monday Musing: To Facebook or Not - What a Question

Over the weekend I read an article out of Newsweek about the "high price of Facebook"; namely, that you pay for it through your loss of privacy. It reported that last year when Facebook changed their rules (yet again), the company made it so that your city and profile picture and the names of all your friends were shared with anybody and everybody on the Internet. But (big but), you had the option to change it all back and make it all private again. Now, Newsweek reports that "Facebook is going even further by insisting that unless you agree to make things like your hometown, interests, and friends' names public, then you can't list them at all."

Facebook is fun and I'm glad I signed up for it last year. Although truth to tell, my sister had to talk me in to it. I stay in touch with friends and family and get to see pictures of everybody's kids, etc. etc. But on the other hand, Facebook is the biggest time waster in the universe......much worse than TV. All those little games you get addicted to and the constant checking to see who's doing what and where and with whom.........it's nuts. And not only does it waste time, but I also think it kills any spark of creativity you might have flickering. The whole Facebook exercise is mind-deadening.....you don't have to really think or do much of anything at all to be wrapped up in its very addictive world.

Newsweek reports that many techie-types are jumping the Facebook ship. Of course, there are more than 400 million Facebookers, so I guess it would have to be a LOT of them to make a blip on the FB screen. It does make one stop and think though. I don't know what Facebook knows about me or what it does with the information. I'm not savvy enough to be able to stop them even if I knew. But for right now, I think I'll hang around. Putting myself on a Facebook diet though probably wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Monday Musing - Facebook Games

Hello, my name is Donna and I'm a Facebook games addict.  I really don't know how it happened.  A friend invited me to play Farm Town and that was kind of neat.  A few weeks later I got an invitation (from the same "friend" whose neck I would cheerfully wring right about now) to participate in FarmVille.  Okay, why not?  The merry-go-round got faster.  YoVille.  PetVille.  Country Life.  Zoo Something.  All of those invitations I managed to turn down.

Then, I discovered My Town on my own.  I was simply lost.

What makes reasonably intelligent people sit down in front of a computer and spend HOURS farming virtual fields and building little cities?  It's crazy.  I've been late for appointments because I just had to do "one more thing" on my farm.  Is it the control factor?  Is it some latent autistic bent.....mindlessly clicking that mouse?  I have no idea.  Surely my life can't be THAT boring, can it?

What I do know is this:  I have a REAL house with a REAL yard that REAL people live in with our REAL animals.  And all of that requires REAL work to maintain.  True, it's a lot more messy to manage than anything on Facebook.  Real things tend to be sort of messy in my experience.  But I think I should remember that it's a lot more satisfying to go smell a REAL flower growing in REAL dirt, even if I can't control how well it grows or how much it blooms.

There's a place and time for games, just not every day.  And maybe not even on a computer.  Anyone for a game of Hearts?