Slashdot Mirror
Why Facebook Is Stressing You Out
Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber reports that the more friends you have on Facebook — or, perhaps more accurately, the more 'friends' you have on Facebook — the more stressed you're likely to be about actually having them. The wider your Facebook network, the more likely it is that something you say or do on the site will end up offending one of that network's members. The stress comes from the kind of personal versioning that is common in analog life — the fact that you (probably) behave slightly differently when you're with your mom than you do when you're with your boss, or with your boyfriend, or with your dentist. A study of over 300 Facebook users found that on average people are Facebook friends with seven different social circles. The most common group was friends who were known from offline environments (97 percent added them as friends online), followed by extended family (81 percent), siblings (80 percent), friends of friends (69 percent), and colleagues (65 percent). Those are, in the sociological sense, very different groups — groups that carry different (and unspoken-because-obvious) behavioral expectations. Per the study's survey, 'adding employers or parents resulted in the greatest increase in anxiety.'"
My Wife has a FB account and she has a lot of "friends" who post political "opinions". All they do is parrot opinions of pundits - aggressively. Pin them down as to exactly why they have "their" opinion and they resort to the talking that they heard.
Yeah, both sides are guilty of this, but I have to say, the folks on the right are the worst and the angriest.
People don't have their own opinions.
Fucking A! Sometimes I think I'm in an Ayn Rand novel with the one dimensional characters and a plot fit for a children's book!