Keep it real please!

Generally the posts on my blog are supposed to have some sort of positive outlook but every now and again I need to have a little rant. The target of my annoyance (and often is) this time is facebook. Yes I am a member but I hate most things about it!

• People who make stupid groups to just get members
• People who join these stupid groups just to be a member of 1000's of groups
• Pointless status updates
• Constant soppy updates about missing there boy/girlfriend despite only having seen them 20 minutes ago
• The use of the term lol and most other txt speak
• The word 'Facebook'
• The way it is taking over society
• People who you never spoke to adding you as a friend, probabily to do some spying
• People with 1,000,001 photos of themselves taken from a mobile phone especially showing there chest off (male or female)
• Fake profiles
• The term 'deactivate' rather than 'delete' as I gather they keep all your information until you eventually come crawling back

Ok then here's the positive part, what I actually like about Facebook

• Genuinely helpful news articles
• Easy to keep in contact with friends
• Most things in one place
• It will be old news some day and people will stop making such a fuss (fingers crossed)

I often browse through the latest technology news and more and more often finding these stories on how people have used Facebook to do all there social laundry or how something on Facebook is the height of importance.

I think at the root of my irritation over Facebook is that when It becomes a part of (and detracts from) of anything outside Facebook itself. An few examples: real life career compromises. The constant reporting of what you do in your life rather than just living the moment and keeping it between those who where there. The need to check updates over doing other activities when round friends houses.

Do social networks make us less social?See: http://bokardo.com/archives/does-social-software-make-us-less-social/
Two sides of the story really that Social networking sites allow us to more easily contact our friends and make arrangements however does the sheer amount of time spent on them leave us less time to actually meet with friends?

I would say that it was only fairly extreme cases where it decreases our time we actually spend with friends in person. If it wasn't this it would be something else to take up our spare time, on the opposite end of the scale I also believe that it doesn't increase the regularity of our offline meetings either as we have mobile phones to contact friends anytime we want. Please note anyone who has a different opinion please comment on this post.

Rant over.