Your disdain (“How odd”) for MFFBs, and your subsequent ghettoization of the group, by assigning it a term which suggests that those people are somehow delinquent in their obligation to show up for something everyone else is doing, including yourself, is obvious. Your own enthusiasm for social networking has clouded your judgement in being able to appreciate the nuances that may attend an individual’s absence from facebook. Why is it indicative of an “anti” anything stance? Maybe it’s because there are other ways that person wishes to spend their time. Why must it be interpreted as an aggressive act?

I chose not to list myself in the phonebook, when phonebooks existed. I had nothing against phonebooks, or the people in them, and in fact, I used phonebooks myself from time to time. I just didn’t want to be so accessible.

Are people who go on retreats, or chose to live off the grid, or in solitude, all society haters? Some of them are, perhaps, but probably a small minority. It would be irresponsible for a social scientist to lump them all into one big, society-hating category. There are many reasons why a person might choose that lifestyle. Different values, for one. Why would you judge them for it, if not because their choice threatened yours in some way?

You might try to look beyond your own knee-jerk prejudice if you really to understand why some people choose to live a facebook-free life.

Try this one on for size:
http://spectatrix.com/2009/03/10/facebook-the-honeymoons-over/

As the sources of thoughts multiply exponentially, the value of thought communicated one to one, or through example, increases. A true thought leader doesn’t not need to promote himself in a mass way. His or her influence will always be strongest in person, and their reputation will be spread by others. Would you rather mildly influence a thousand netizens for a day or even a year or two, or profoundly influence your family members, close friends and colleagues for a lifetime? This is not a philosophical debate, this is an operational reality, and I sense that the fact that many chose to stay off Facebook is very evidence of this.

http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=grant+mccracken&init=q&sid=6cb8fdfd40a5f28a0ef448eb1b973005

Haven’t been able to figure out which one is you yet …

I don’t use FB for the simple reason that I am burned out on social networking sites. I was an early adopter of Friendster, Tribes, OKCupid, LinkedIn, and others – and I never got anything useful from any of them. Oh, it was fun for a while building up a social graph of people that I knew – but then that social graph just sat there and did nothing. A mere handful of messages flowed back and forth, compared to hundreds of emails from friends over the same time period. Most of the messages I received from these services is automatic email updates for things that I didn’t care about. Eventually I abandoned these sites because there was nothing for me there.

When I write, I write essays – I think long and hard about what I want to write, and then take care to write it clearly and completely. I’m not interested in tweets or updates – I really don’t care what you happen to be doing right now, nor have I any interest in anyone else knowing what I am doing. I’m not interested in casual chit-chat, I’d rather hear an argument or a lecture, something from which I can learn new insights about the world.

When I hear your plea for me to join FB, what I hear is “come on in sucker, and get prepared for another disappointment.”

Wired last month had an article on why they think FB will win at the game of syncing these personas across the board: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall

Hmmm. I’ve seen a correlation from Yankelovich related to this–people with more of a FB network are less concerned about losing their job. But I’d worry about that implying causation, or that millenials are viewing FB as their safety net. Will their FB “friends” pay them if their corporation fires them? It seems to me that’s a function of youth–in your 20s you do not worry as much about losing a job since you have few responsibilities, and you can always crash on Mom and Dad’s couch. And millenials are by definition younger.

I think you are right (and bang on) about the importnace and impact of social networks in general, but not necessarily about FB in particular – it may last it may not.

FB (and other networks) are very BLUNT tools for managing and communicating with friends. I badly want to stratify my FB friends into family, friends, aquainances, blog readers, colleagues, neighbours and so on. I want to communicate with them in different ways (I don’t want my holiday pictures displayed to my colleauges). I can see how people therefore maintain whacky personas on MS, a sensible one on FB and a business one on LinkedIn. That’s not sustainable. The first network to crack the multiple circles of friends will start to draw ahead.

alternatively, and perhaps as well, I think we’ll eventually see open networks of networks, so that my persona on linkedin can ‘friend’ and talk to your persona on facebook.

An interesting post.

Secondly, the concept of a generational divide between the ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’, as promulgated by Prensky, Tapscott and others is not supported by the evidence. The truth is much more boring – some of the ‘net generation’ do indeed grasp technology very easily, but many more do not have access, are socially excluded from the web, or make a conscious decision to opt out. Papers by Selwyn and Bennett et al both review the evidence and conclude that the concept of a generational divide has more to do with moral panic than it does reality.

I just wrote a long blog post on the idea of generational digital capability, if you’re interested: http://strange.corante.com/2009/07/01/myths-of-age-and-digital-capability

ignorance… what’s a blog?

incredulity, derision and willful misunderstanding .. you mean several times a day, short messages, but who on earth cares that you’ve just finished the washing up?

fear and suspicion… when I was their age we *spoke* to our friends, it can’t be good all this screentime – and these people I heard of: they tweeted they were on holiday and their house was burgled

unwillingly intrigued… well, apparently she saw it on facebook and so..

toe in the water… No, I’m only on it to see what the children are doing.

gentle usage… no, hardly at all, just a few status updates, but, wow, it’s surprising all these old friends that find you, I hadn’t seen her for nearly 20 years and out of nowhere she friended me

immersion… so, I’ve got my facebook updates going out automatically as tweets, plus on the sidebar of my blog, I’ve got 129 friends, which is too many really, I’m going to start refusing