[brianfitz]

I remember reading this when it was originally posted years ago and have had time to think about the implications. I am just over 40, so most of my class reunions were organized through Facebook and was amazed at the turn-out possible because of these new social networks. For my mother, there were simply people she no longer knew how to reach — including one of her best friends from childhood. Years went by until Facebook gained traction and they were reunited.

The point being, it is just as likely that the writer of this post wasn’t left out any more than he would have been in the past. What has possibly changed is that a funeral lightly attended by only a few in the past could now reach the many. In the past, he would have missed hearing about the death and would have missed the funeral. In the present, the same thing happened but now feels left out.

It’s a benefit to the mother who lost her child, but a detriment to the friend who feels left behind.

[gfodor]

The problem is one of counterfactuals. Given the growth of the internet, something that provides the value of Facebook to people was inevitable. What wasn't inevitable was that it take on the form of a centralized service that ended up enveloping the world. In the past, centralized services gave way to shared internet protocols before they reached the size and scale Facebook has.

There are certainly other paths the world could have taken where such power and control would not be in the hands of one company (and one person, really) but that's not what happened and it's worth lamenting if you believe the problem of "keeping friends connected through the internet" could have taken on radically different forms.

[gm-conspiracy]

Disagree.

I am around your age, and my 10 year reunion had its own domain name and website (still up - not sure who is paying for it or hosting), but my most recent reunion (20 year) was only on Facebook, and since I have never had a Facebook account, I did not find out until about a week beforehand (second-hand from a friend who was not attending).

Please be aware, this is a cohort that has mostly been together since elementary/middle school, learned Logowriter together, and had an HTML CD-ROM yearbook.

Facebook has made everybody lazy and cheapened our relationships.

[watwut]

How were people supposed to find about your domain name and website? How would you reach those who changed emails?

How does lack of domain and website cheapens relationships?

[twic]

This is the reason i joined Facebook in the first place. I was at graduate school, and had a decent social life with some of the other students. Then a few of them got Facebook, and started using that to organise parties. After i missed a couple, for no reason other than that i wasn't on Facebook and the people organising them were some combination of lazy and scatterbrained, i joined.

I did that in part because i didn't want a repeat of the experience i had with LiveJournal as an undergraduate, where conversation and organisation that had been happening in university newsgroups suddenly evacuated to LJ and left me on my own.

(I don't think these moves were deliberate attempts to avoid me. I'm still good friends with all these people decades later, and they really would have found a way to shake me by now.)

[pmlnr]

If you lost contact so long ago, it migt be better to leave it like that: https://thoughtcatalog.com/stephanie-georgopulos/2011/08/a-l...

[briandear]

Spectacular essay — thanks for posting.

[exDM69]

> The point being, it is just as likely that the writer of this post wasn’t left out any more than he would have been in the past.

Although this may apply to OP's problem(s), it's not really the case everywhere. I'll give you two counterexamples:

1) A friend of mine is required to have a facebook account for school (woodworking trade school). They say "you can always create one with a fake name" but that's obviously a TOS violation and may cause the account to be deleted at any time (making schoolwork really difficult).

2) My basketball group has decided to organize things on WhatsApp, again requiring you to accept FB's EULA. I refuse to do so, which results me in missing quite a few occasions to play and finding myself alone in the gym when practice has been called off.

Neither of these things were done on facebook in the past. Yes, it might be more convenient to do so (for the organizing party) but it'll leave a bunch of people out who refuse to sign carte blanche EULA for a company that preys on our personal information and influences our voting behavior.

Both of these cases are examples where email or phone would be acceptable, but it's (only) slightly more convenient to use social media for those who are a part of it.

[EADGBE]

The generations of people who used email and phone primarily are simply getting older, I think. It kinda forces the hand of this alternative.

Of the soccer team, basketball, and parenting groups I'm in; more and more of my peers probably couldn't even define a "calling tree". To them, there's no "alternative" to group coordination other than social media.

It's just easier to reach out on [X Technology] because they already friend-ed each other the first day of meeting. And FB makes that easy with location-based friend recommendations. Who even knows phone numbers anymore? (Emails next...)

[gm-conspiracy]

convenient = lazy

[komali2]

Agreed. Furthermore, Facebook doesn't require your work history or any of the other things the author claims is it's blood payment cost of entry. Last I checked it needs a valid email address, name, and password.

I've stripped most of my personal information off Facebook and now just use it as a messaging app and a "find me by name" sort of internet yellow pages thing.

[bigiain]

> Last I checked it needs a valid email address, name, and password.

And your social graph. You implicitly give it information about all your interactions and connections - and allow it to record even interactions you aren't aware of (like other FB users looking you up or checking your profile without interacting with you in ways you find out about). You're also opting in to web-wide surveillance, where FB track you individually across every webpage with Facebook social widget on it (unless you take steps to manage your browser's FB login status - and most likely even if you do log out whenever you're done with FB by using "industry standard" ad network browser fingerprinting...)

[wyager]

> Last I checked it needs a valid email address, name, and password.

I’ve had friends have to submit government ID to prove that they were using their real name.

[mattmanser]

It also requires that you allow it to then track you all over the internet, associate that activity with your name and email and social graph, and then sell it to advertisers allowing them to target your activity and your friends elsewhere on the web.

[jmspring]

I'm not a fan of Facebook, use it, also happen to be cutting back. You are correct at the minimal set of interactions necessary to be on there. Honestly, the post mentioned sounded more like whining and an excuse for personal lapses -- "don't contact close friends for an extended period of time". If the writer had put a bit more energy into maintaining offline relationships, maybe he would have heard about both events prior to them happening.

edit: cleaning up the grammar