Susan's Place Transgender Resources

QuoteHere's the real problem: Facebook's social network can't mirror the actual social networks, or social groups, that people have. Because of that, users are beginning to notice a curious effect: The more you use Facebook, the less usable it becomes ..

Facebook is structured on the false assumption that you have one social network. But nobody has one social group. A nine-year-old has at least two -- parents and peers. A teenager has at least three -- add "trusted close friends." And a middle-aged adult has many: Former school-mates, former colleagues (each company is a separate peer group), non-nuclear family, nuclear family, current co-workers, close friends, etc.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179258/The_five_stages_of_Facebook_grief (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179258/The_five_stages_of_Facebook_grief)

Exactly right.  I can say some things to one group of friends that I would never want another group to hear

I think this is one of the major reasons why I don't use anything like facebook.

In real life (or at least for most people) judgments are on a day to day basis on how we act. Unless you intentionally mix work with family (like a company pick nick) what you say at work about your family wont make it to the ears of your family (you'd have to be real low or foolish to be like that about it but it's just an example).

For the first few years of the Internet, everyone was anonymous until places like facebook came along, a place on the internet where you were no longer anonymous. Even if it's only people you choose to see your posts or what others have posted about you, it's still a potential cesspool where all our dirty crap eventually comes to the surface (if your like the examples of goof ups this article listed).

I found it much easier to just not participate then it would be to either lie to people and say I don't have one because I don't want them reading the posts, or to tell everyone I have a facebook account and eventually have someone from this site post something that could out me to all of my friends, family and co-workers (accidentally of course).

It might take a little extra time, but I would rather keep each group separate. The people I talk to here don't know my World of Warcraft characters names and vice versa. I don't mind saying I play World of Warcraft to this group, but I wouldn't ever think of telling my World of Warcraft friends I converse on the subject of GID and wishing I was a female at Susans.org (unless it was a group of people from this forums that wanted to create characters on a select realm and so forth).

On the flip side of this though, real life social networks could prove to be just as damaging as a site like facebook. My SO knows about my GID, and if she ever wanted to be vindictive towards me she could tell everyone on in my guild that I wished I was a female, including my brother who's in the guild (and if she knew I had an account here tell them my screen name here).

He makes an accurate prediction that facebook users will move on, but for the wrong reason. Beyond that prediction, this writer is clueless. People will move on simply because they will get bored with it. IRC, myspace, livejournal, etc. died off for that reason.

On facebook, you can create lists (social groups) that can see specific entries. If you don't want everyone seeing something, pick/create the list of those you do want seeing it, & assign it to them. If you get tagged in a photo, remove the tag. Takes the pic right off your profile.

Most of the people having the problems mentioned in the article just aren't thinking before they do things.

And really, if you want to be anonymous, maybe you should stay offline. When you get online, you're leaving trails.