h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ads don't bother me (unless they have noisy videos on autoplay - then I tweet the company that there is no way I'll ever even look at their site/product let alone purchase anything) - in fact I just had one for a butcher in NL that make english style sausages - and I'll definitely try their product.

If you set your facebook at the highest privicy and don't allow any tagging of you, that's pretty much all you can do. It depends how you use social media and how you want to use it.

After all - despite the scare stories in the MSM - you have to allow someone to "be your friend" on fb, otherwise they can't see anything. And even then you can control what each and every one of your fb friends can see. or not.

I use Twitter for a whole lot of things.
- a source of information about local events, like gigs, theatre, talks etc
- practical stuff like traffic alerts, public transport updates, etc - I find it is easily the best way of finding out if a train line's closed, road is flooded, or whatever
- union stuff: a lot of union communication takes place using work IT systems (with management's agreement), but it is invaluable to have a way of keeping people in touch which doesn't depend on management agreement (and isn't monitored, of course)
- for filling little couple of minute intervals - eg, waiting for a train, or for someone to arrive for a meeting. The sort of occasions which are too short to do anything like read a book, etc
- as a sort of "heads up" for interesting news/media pieces that likeminded people recommend
- not least, for messing about and talking shit. There are a lot of people whose wit and commentary I thoroughly enjoy, but who live/work quite a distance away. It's a means of keeping in touch with them and having a bit of banter.
- and for griping about things of course.

I have a like/hate relationship with Facebook.

On Facebook, I only "friend" people I actually know, mostly in person. (I also follow a few pages). Even at that, I'm amazed I've managed to amass 83 "friends". That seems like too many. It might be time for a purge.

Of those 83, there are several that while they're "friends" I have unfollowed them to hide them from my timeline. This usually happens with people who I have an association with and might want to keep in contact with, but I tire of their political posts. Many people I know IRL are staunch conservatives and some are outright bigots. I get along better with them if I don't read their posts. I'm sure many people have done the same with me. That said, I don't post my political views as often on FB as I once did.


On Twitter, I mostly follow people I don't know IRL. I curate my list there to focus on people and pages that post things and links I might enjoy reading. Since very few of my followers on Twitter are people I associate with IRL I do share more political views, links and (mostly) retweets there. However, the never ending timeline on twitter can be overwhelming and I don't check on it as often as I do Facebook.


That has to mean something. I spend more time on FB, which I don't enjoy as much as Twitter. FB is somehow more addictive while also being more unpleasant.


That all said, I am much more open and closer to my internal persona on h2g2 than anywhere else. Yet I've only met a very few people from here IRL. But those I have met have all been delightful.

The Hootooers I've met in real life have been delightful, as well. Sadly, there are far fewer within geographically easy reach than there used to be, and an ocean separates me from most of the others.

I use lots of social media.

I'm of Facebook, several times a day. My adult children are on there,and it allows me to keep up to date with what they're at. Also running groups, dancing peeps, scrabble players, hootooers, other real life friends, and few people that I've never actually met.

Twitter is a bit esoteric, but it's a great way of sharing and re-sharing info, so.....fundraising, blog posts, any memes that I feel deserve sharing, advertising of shows and local events. Also very good real time info on traffic, weather, what's going on down the road.

on Twitter you can highlight some accounts so that you always get a notification when they post. I use that function sparingly - in fact only for the account that tweets about train delays in my area.

I tend to get a lot of followers when I've just been active on Twitter. (those of you who follow me there will know what I mean I'm probably a huge pain) So when I'm having a rant during the Andrew Marr Show (#MarrShow) or reminiscing during the Friday night Top of the Pops (#TOTP) or the bake off (#GBBO) or Strictly (#SCD) or whatever football thing I'm watching...
Or the hashtag games (they would take too long to explain) if I'm on form.

Usually I go through who I follow every few months and boot off those that turned out not to be interesting or who don't follow me.

Twitter lists are the next thing I need to work out. They seem useful but I'm not sure how.

The lists are like a way of categorising accounts according to themes, but you don't necessarily have to follow the accounts.

So, eg, I've set one up called "Wildlife". I've added a whole heap of people to it who tweet wildlife stuff, but who I don't necessarily want to follow. So when I want to see what wildlife-y things are going on, I can view that list, and read them when I want to, without my ordinary timeline being flooded the rest of the time.

I don't actually use lists much, though. I tend to forget about them until I get little messages telling me "So-and-so has added you to his 'Ireland' list", or whatever.

It's easy to forget about the lists. I did. I would occasionally switch to a third party twitter client when I wanted to limit my attention to a particular list. I had forgotten they were available on twitter, directly; that I had made lists there. They hide under your avatar.

I started out on FB with the rule that I would only friend people I had met, and rarely saw. So, old schoolfriends and relatives, mainly. But I soon ended up friending people from the village and invisible friends from h2g2. I found it worked better for me once I'd worked out how to hide posts about candy crush scores and music videos. It's not really a place for conversations - I come here for those - but it's good for keeping up to date with people I rarely see and don't have time to write to, particularly my cousins, as we approach that stage of life where we will start meeting up fairly regularly at funerals.

Twitter took me ages to get the hang of. I thought it was compulsory to follow Stephen Fry and a skew of celebs and couldn't see the point. I have ended up following all sorts of interesting and entertaining feeds and I catch up several times a day (I don't follow many people so this only takes a couple of minutes). Sometimes I tweet, or retweet, or share something that's interested or annoyed me. If I'm boring people they won't follow me. But mostly it's like being in a huge pub, overhearing various conversations and joining in with others.

Pinterest I'm still learning about but my daughter has given me a few pointers. My other daughter loved it during her emo phase because it was social media where you weren't social. She has just come back to FB (mainly to be able to message her college friends while staying in touch with a select group of school friends). Previously she was a subversive FB user, using it only to re-post Susan Boyle's updates.

WhatsApp we use as a family, sometimes while we're all in the house, for information sharing and also silly conversations about Scooby Doo. It's a way of being together even when we aren't, which is increasingly the case as the children move into adulthood. I don't use it with anybody else.

That's it really. I don't think it's massively changed my life, it's just another way of staying in touch with the wider world. This place had the biggest impact on me in that respect.

But I do sometimes forget that I've never actually met Sho

Mol

Those of us who have had the pleasure can assure you you should get to any German meet and remedy the deficiency.

Hear, hear!

aw, Guys!!!
(derailing the thread but I've been thinking about you a lot recently Mol since I picked up the S&A books again. Secret Water this time. And I'm going to run out of books soon so I'll need your recs for books about Arthur Ransome)

I had the pleasure of unfriending and blocking someone on Boofcake yesterday.

I had posted a meme themed on the fact that there have been plenty of white, right wing terrorists in recent US history and that blaming Muslims for terrorism is rather inane.

I only had one reply and that was from someone I probably shouldn't have "friended" in the first place as he is at best a loose acquaintance, just I guy I've met at my local pub. His response was pure bigotry, "All Muslims should be eradicated." I responded simply, "Goodbye" and quickly unfriended him. Then a few hours later I received a private message through the FB Messenger app, "Be sure to vote for Hillary, Douche!" I responded "[OK]* bigot!" and blocked him.

That's about as nasty as an exchange as I've ever had on the internet much less on FB. While it wasn't pleasant, it did feel a bit nice to use the banhammer on a bigot.

I had a "MySpace" zone once - I must have been there atleast 5 times. Twitter, maybe 10 or 12 times. I don't even know user names or passwords for them any longer ...

I've certainly had a share of disagreements with persons and personalities on FaceThing - and some have gone to the extreme and blocked me. Oh dear, oh my, I guess I really didn't know them anyway ...

But as to the conversations, I have some pretty good ones there - when the other party has mutual time available. If not, I've learned to just wait another day.

Water seeks its own level, Nick. There are people in he world who are perfect friend material, and there are others who aren't. I wouldn't waste time on the unfriends, and it's obvious that you don;'t either.

For the nth time, I'm looking ahead to the election as a time where candidates I don't especially like will get my vote. And if my candidate loses, I'll be crossing my fingers that the winner won't be as awful as I had feared.

I remembered worrying that the election of Ronald Reagan would bring down the world's economy, as it very nearly did in August of 1982. Nowadays, as improbable as it might seem, I am almost nostalgic for the Gipper. He had some good points, including some very sane practices in supervising his cabinet. He was not a micromanager the way Carter was. "Trust but verify" seems to have been his mantra, and I could not agree more. But then, I was always a softy for the Eisenhower method, which was fairly similar. I liked Ike a lot, still do.

I was dissatisfied by George Bush Junior, but some of the things that he got blasted for the most made him more sympathetic to me. In Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911", Bush was criticized for opting to finish the storybook he reading to a class of schoolchildren after he was told of the World Trade Center attacks. I thought that was kind of charming. What good would it have done to alarm the children? Bush's staff had things under control, and finishing the story only took a few extra minutes.

The other thing I liked about Bush was his support for the government bailout of failed banks in 2008. As an MBA, he knew economics better than most people would have given him credit for, and he was putting the country's good ahead of his political scalp. We criticize politicians for not being statesmen, so when they do act like statesmen we should support them.

Facebook I tired of early on, and the n Facebook blocked me from my own account, which as its linked to my main (only real) email, means the secondary facebook I set up, I don't check in on, hardly ever, so I just ignore facebook... it got increasingly cumbersome to use anhow, IMO, so I just tend to use twitter thesedays, albeit sparingly, and only as I've a handy (for me twitter client I use on teh PC, that makes it nice and quick to read through stuff... on the phone I use it too, sometimes, dependa what I'm doing though, and where I am as to how much time I'll devote to reading through things, on the phone, where its more cumbersome and time consuming to read on...

h2g2 is the first social media site I joined & certainly the best I've encountered. I don't actually know anyone here in real life.

Dabbled a bit in friends reunited just to see what old schoolmates are doing. Did alert me to a school reunion which I attended, but haven't kept up with since.

I joined facebook reluctantly & only in order to join a closed group with a particular medical focus that I'm interested in. My settings are the highest privacy available & I have posted minimal information - no friends. I drop in on the group daily & interact with people there. Occasionally I play games or look up people I know. Not usually of much interest there! I know people in different spheres of life & certainly wouldn't want to share everything with all of them.

Likewise I have joined a couple of message board/support groups on other sites.

Twitter I joined to keep up with my son's postings. I don't follow many people, but have found it interesting. Has alerted me to one or two events, news stories & the like. Something that needs visiting frequently to be sure not to miss things but usually scroll through pretty quickly.

I can't stand the inanity of so much of the social media.