Social media etiquette?
So I've been trying to use Facebook and figure out how I can make it useful to me. But I'm starting to wonder about the etiquette I'm seeing... things that have been socially unacceptable on other social media for years. (Usenet and mailing lists and forums were "social" long before this so-called "social media" came about.)
Facebook seems to have the idea of "socially acceptable" turned around... you are encouraged to inundate your "friends" with all kinds of crap (invites, gifts, pets, etc) and it's up to your friend to filter you. It takes discretion out of the equation because it's no longer the sender's responsibility to decide what's appropriate, it's the recipient's.
And the thing I find really weird about this is... how is this "social"? On a mailing list, my friends and I talk to each other. On Facebook, I have friends who never actually write anything at me, but shower me with gizmo after gizmo. They aren't being social with me... they are interacting with an application, which in turn bugs me with some generic bit of fluff. If I don't like the fluff, I just block it... I don't have to tell my friend I didn't like it.
I don't like having to block every danged application that people use to send me crap... it's very much like having to delete spam from my mailbox. But I don't want to entirely block the people I'm connected with so they can't send me anything.
In many ways, people seem to be interacting with Facebook as if it were a game and not as a tool to stay connected with people. And that can make it pretty useless to me. Not giving up just yet, but the inability to get most of the information I want by RSS or email is a huge strike against them. (I can't get anything out of the Groups application, apparently... even as group owner, it won't email me when someone joins or posts.)