The Complete Dummies Guide to Facebook and Facebook Dummies

In the beginning, Facebook was such a great idea and even now it holds some promise of being a decent tool for communication if people actually thought about what they were doing when they open their news feed. 

It could be so much more than what a lot of users allow it to be.  I'm talking about positive things, but too often it's an uphill battle to remain positive about all the ways people actually use it when they interact with friends and the world at large.  

Have we all lost our ability to communicate with one another? I think more people should look at Facebook as if they were having an actual conversation with a friend or relative, one that can be overheard by everyone in the room around you. One that your kids or grandkids can hear.  That might solve some of the issues I see with the platform.  

Two developments have taken much of the shine off Facebook, at least for me.  First, they learned to monetize the product and then they learned to weaponize the product. Advertising is a huge cash cow for the company, and I understand that the product would not exist if the company could not get some return on their investment so I'm willing to see advertising when I visit Facebook.  

What I mean by weaponized is that Facebook collects all sorts of information about us for the purpose of showing us specific advertising that we might actually be interested in.  That means that the company that paid for that ad would stand a better chance of getting the viewer of the ad to open the ad and, with a little luck, visit the company website and make a purchase.  Most companies don't want to purchase advertising that doesn't actually result in sales so Facebook works very hard collecting our likes, dislikes, politics, marital situation, number and ages of children, health, and all sorts of other information on each of us users.  In a lot of ways, they know more about us than our families do.  They even use information from people on our friend list to direct ads to us. For example, just this week I've had several ads pop up in my feed telling me that some of my friends "like" Best Buy.  

 It boils down to this: the more information you put about yourself on Facebook—where you live, your age, where (and if) you graduated college, the companies, brands, and activities you like, and even where you work—determines what kind of ads you'll see. In theory, it makes it so that targeted ads are more relevant to you personally. If you like knitting you will be shown advertisements for yarn rather than for sporting equipment. 

There are settings you can change and share a lot less information with Facebook....but that would not lessen the number of ads you see, but only change the type we see.

The second current problem with Facebook in my view is politics and it is a much worse issue than learning to deal with advertising.   What we have learned is that some very dangerous enemies of the United States have learned that they can sway public opinion in the US by making certain kinds of posts on Facebook using fake names and accounts.  That is a huge problem for the country and my hope is that law enforcement and security experts are working to defeat that problem.  

Perhaps less serious, but most annoying on a personal basis are those users who use facebook only for telling the world how much they love/hate whichever politician or how they feel on every single social issue imaginable.  It doesn't bother me that people have political opinions, I have them too, but why is it necessary to post 4 or 5 of those opinions each and every day.  I have "friends" at Facebook who post nothing but political "memes" copied from somewhere else. Some might even be funny, but mostly they are just irritating. If you tell me (and the whole rest of the world) once that you hate Nancy Pelosi I don't need to be told again, or again and again, or every day for months.  I promise. I will remember your political preference.  I promise too; if you post political memes that make fun of or belittle my political preferences I will remember that too. Are you sure you want to be friends with me? 

If you write down your own ideas expressing political beliefs I will appreciate those, even if I don't agree, but knowing those are your own words....I respect the idea that you went to that effort.  Two people, even with different ideas can have a conversation that way.  Posting the most unflattering, or even altered photo of your political nemesis, with some snarky comment, or even a false or misleading bit of information about that person does not invite conversation.  What it invites is just another snarky meme of the opposite view.  Why should I have to be explaining these concepts to adults?  

Don't get me wrong, I believe adults can, and should have discussions involving political ideas but most of the political rot I see on Facebook does exactly the opposite....it creates a feeling of not wanting to talk to the person who posted it, it creates isolation between two sides of any debate.  Each side simply moves to their corner and throws political meme's at the other side without ever really trying to understand what the other side believes and why they believe what they do. 

For those of you who are not quite sure what I mean when I say "political memes" this is a brief description.   The political meme — most often text over an image, sometimes short videos or digital clip art meant to spread and be imitated — is often a guttural, simple message, sometimes couched in humor, like the doctored video of Hillary Clinton being hit with Trump's golf ball. Four random samples of what I call political rot followed with brief comments about each.  

 This one is a classic, text over a photo with a very simple easy to remember message.  
Often though the makers of these things
 look for the worst picture of the person 
 they can find, and if they can't find one  
they doctor one.  Very easy to copy and 
use on your own page.  Perfect for the
mentally lazy who don't want to be bothered writing something themselves.    

 Sometimes a bit of humor is used to make the message seem less unkind.  

But just as often humor is skipped altogether.  This one is classic in that they dug up an unflattering picture of the former first lady....and maybe enhanced it a bit to make her look worse.  

This is technically not a meme, but this is the sort of picture that haters of Nancy Pelosi dream of finding and turning into a meme. 

  







A note to my facebook friends....if you start using a lot of these on your page I'm going to lose interest in visiting your page pretty quickly.