Fear of Facebook

[My Entropy]

As if there weren't already enough forms of social anxiety to encounter, this one only appeared in the last decade. Ive tried to integrate myself into the beast that is facebook, but after years just cant seem to fit in or fit it into my life. Particular difficulties involve:

-its embarrassing to send out friend requests, it seems too schoolyard.
-adding new friends who can be called cool people shows them how few friends i have compared to them.
-Ive never done status updates/checked in/liked etc and feel too self concious to start now.
-Ive never posted photos apart from a profile photo every couple of years
-If i try to reply to another wall post with some witty response, i read it 10 times, trying to check that it is witty, but then reading too much makes me lose track of what the words mean.
-I have friends on my list who arent close, eg old school people that i feel very exposed to if they were to read a comment i made to someone else.
-I tend to have different personality traits around different people, publicly joking to one friend might shame me in front of another.
-Reading about how everyone else is so happy, always vacationing and having good times fills me with envy
-I keep seeing what things close friends have gone to and maybe purposefully not invited me to
-Seeing people i went to school with now all getting married
-I find the whole thing a bit cringey sometimes, posts like "hungover at work" or "going tesco, LOL" just make me cringe uncomfortably

thing is i joined in the first place just to get invited to places, as not being on it can mean being forgotten about when birthdays etc are organised. Also its just that i try to overcome social issues by pushing myself out there. Every now and then i think il try a bit harder to integrate on facebook but the same problems crop up. And i do think the onus is on me to try as its seems to be the favoured way right now for the world to communicate, so i cant just abandon it all.

Any thoughts?

 

[sullyS25]

As if there weren't already enough forms of social anxiety to encounter, this one only appeared in the last decade. Ive tried to integrate myself into the beast that is facebook, but after years just cant seem to fit in or fit it into my life. Particular difficulties involve:

-its embarrassing to send out friend requests, it seems too schoolyard.
-adding new friends who can be called cool people shows them how few friends i have compared to them.
-Ive never done status updates/checked in/liked etc and feel too self concious to start now.
-Ive never posted photos apart from a profile photo every couple of years
-If i try to reply to another wall post with some witty response, i read it 10 times, trying to check that it is witty, but then reading too much makes me lose track of what the words mean.
-I have friends on my list who arent close, eg old school people that i feel very exposed to if they were to read a comment i made to someone else.
-I tend to have different personality traits around different people, publicly joking to one friend might shame me in front of another.
-Reading about how everyone else is so happy, always vacationing and having good times fills me with envy
-I keep seeing what things close friends have gone to and maybe purposefully not invited me to
-Seeing people i went to school with now all getting married
-I find the whole thing a bit cringey sometimes, posts like "hungover at work" or "going tesco, LOL" just make me cringe uncomfortably

thing is i joined in the first place just to get invited to places, as not being on it can mean being forgotten about when birthdays etc are organised. Also its just that i try to overcome social issues by pushing myself out there. Every now and then i think il try a bit harder to integrate on facebook but the same problems crop up. And i do think the onus is on me to try as its seems to be the favoured way right now for the world to communicate, so i cant just abandon it all.

Any thoughts?

Well I definitely can identify with most of what you are saying...but maybe not to the same extent as you. Especially when it comes to someone posting on my wall or responding to a status I have posted but I just write a response now and hit enter right away....it is more natural that way...like how I would do it in real life. As for the number of friends....that truly is bull**** that people care about those numbers.....most people will add people they just met to get the number up and it is horse ****...who cares....it isn't about quantity it is about quality.

You can always unsubscribe from the peoples that have pointless status updates or unfriend them...it really isn't that big of a deal and I do it all the time...Mainly because I don't care to hear what someone is having for dinner every night.

I don't know I guess this might not be helping you but if it is really messing with you that bad you can always just delete it....then come back when you feel comfortable...or never come back

 

[Eyv]

This is how i feel about Facebook too, that's why i swore to myself never to make an account. It's worked pretty good so far accept people often think i'm weird because i don't have one, as everyone my age has an account.

If it troubles you too much maybe its best to just let go.

 

[Flowers-Of-Bloom]

Yeah, that's why I permanently deleted my account. Problem solved!

 

[Azael]

When it comes down to it, Facebook is simply either your way of keeping in contact with the few people that you actually know or a means to be a blaggard. The nature of Facebook and the details you can post means it does become a tad sensitive to people like us. But don't allow the blaggards to make you feel like you have to live up to something. Facebook is actually a very unimportant thing. I do have an account myself and removed all those people who were simply trying to promote themselves in artificial ways. That essentially means I only have my family right now, but better that then setting myself up for a self-esteem battering.

 

[razzle dazzle rose]

I opened a FB account for the same reasons as you. It really is an easy way to keep in touch with people. While it really has not served the intended purpose (yet) I don't regret opening an account.

It is overwhelming, and early on I knew that I would have to "participate". So I update, and I comment and "like" people's updates, and request people occasionally. Sometimes, I don't feel too social so I won't go to fb in a couple days.

You mention you have not participated there much and feel it is too late. It is never too late. You can begin small. If it is worth the effort to you of course. Many people don't bother with FB and that is fine too. It would be less stress!

 

[Feathers]

hm, I have a sort of love-hate relationship with fb too.. It can be a means of connecting with other people, but also a source of phobia, lol!!
(There are articles and blog posts about this too, google eg 'Facebook anxiety' or such? There have been quite a few threads on this forum too )

Some interesting people I know don't update much and don't have many 'friends' listed & I always keep thinking, 'Wow, they must have really busy/interesting lives'... So if you don't update much, maybe other people think that about you too??

Some people just go for 'padding the list', one can add all sorts of organisations or 'famous people' etc. and your list of friends can be 'big' - it depends if you're really interested in all those, also, some people don't think about privacy much... If you put some personal info on there, it can be better to have a smaller list of friends for privacy etc. You can tweak privacy settings, they seem to change a bit though, so it's not 100%...

There are options to tell some things to just some people, or to be updated by some and not by others, there's quite some 'help' online too (by fb or blogs/sites that give people tricks and tips about how to speak on fb...)
You know, companies HIRE people and pay them (quite well) to post on fb - why? Because it can be dang annoying, that's why!! lol!

You can start status updates and like others' statuses anytime, yeah, if you want to - some people are on fb a lot, some aren't... and with the changing privacy settings some people may assume you put them on 'not everything' anyway (usually, people can be too busy talking about own stuff than what you post about lol) so just join in if something looks interesting? (you might want to check their privacy settings too though lol)

People usually post good things on fb, and don't 'brag' about negative times... just read into 'empty spaces'? Everyone's life is ups and downs, maybe they've had some rough times too, they just won't put it on fb, as it's sort of 'advertising'... you can probably 'advertise' some cool things too? (if you want, that is! )

I prefer forums with a nickname or talking to people in RL.... fb is 'survivable' and at times fun, it can be a lot of stress too lol... Good luck if you keep at it, if not, happy clearance!

 

[Lea]

I have FB only because I am curious of what others post ::. Otherwise I wouldn´t care for having my own profile. Nevertheless I do post on there too, predominantly it´s stupid comments and photoalbums.

 

[da_illest101]

I have facebook, mostly to chat with people, I rarely post anything. One thing that bothered me about facebook is that I sync my facebook with my phone, now I have the phone number of everyone in my list that did the same. Unfortunately for me most likely they have mine, which was never my goal to begin with

 

[Richey]

i find it odd that people use their real names, as in first and last names. because really the website is a free service in the concept that is similar to say..a forum. on forums people use nicknames for instance. so..why don't people use nicknames on these social networking sites? information from fb users are being used behind their backs in some way. I know someone who has 390 friends and hardly ever uses their facebook page for anything with substance at all. I just got tired of it and deleted my profile after a while. Was sick of receiving friend requests from people i met once and talked to for longer then 30 minutes. I found if i decided to ignore that friend addy then those people would keep persisting and to me that is too much of uncomfortable scenario to really have to bother with.

also the fact that employers now look at facebook sites etc. I just find it all a bit too much like overkill. It's become almost an obligation and a must to have a profile and because of this i usually rebel against it. because i don't see FB as any different or better then the millions of other profile sites out there. Its just the sheepish nature of people that has seen it become popular, rather then people deciding for themselves. Its sort of why Justin Bieber has 50 million youtube views. it is not because of substance, its the sheep being hurded around.

if i do evern start up another profile on one of those sites it will be a nickname and just for the enjoyment factor of it, as in for writing about music or something cool like that.

my advice? use a nickname, perhaps your first name somewhere in the nickname. stick to msn and email

 

[ikbenrifi]

Lately i have posting phobia, and that includes Facebook and SPW forums too!!
i know this is crazy but for some reason i prefer to remain invisible in forums, when i open my msn i always choose to appear offline, the same with facebook, i avoid interacting with people even in virtual world, even if it's not really what i want to do.
it's the reason why i dont comment here, so this is my first comment in a year or two.
Thanks for the thread

 

[MrJones]

Lately i have posting phobia, and that includes Facebook and SPW forums too!!
i know this is crazy but for some reason i prefer to remain invisible in forums, when i open my msn i always choose to appear offline, the same with facebook, i avoid interacting with people even in virtual world, even if it's not really what i want to do.
it's the reason why i dont comment here, so this is my first comment in a year or two.
Thanks for the thread

Barça fans are always welcome to post as much as they want, so no need to have anxiety for posting here ::

As for me, I made a Facebook and deactivated it after half an hour or so. No friends --> no Facebook. I was very afraid of posting here at first and going to the irc, and still I'm not comfortable doing so, but I think I stopped caring that much.

 

[NathanielWingatePeaslee]