[NTLK] OT - Off Topic - Facebook (was: New twist on Poutine)

[T. Warren Christopher]

Well put Frank. I could not agree more. Personal contact has for many people gone out the window.
Cheers 

Warren -aka - Yeoleman


-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Gruendel <newtontalk at pda-soft.de>
To: newtontalk <newtontalk at newtontalk.net>
Sent: Sat, Mar 9, 2013 4:45 pm
Subject: [NTLK] OT - Off Topic - Facebook (was: New twist on Poutine)


> I AM on Facebook

I'm not. For a variety of reasons. Explaining them all would take... well...
long. So allow me to explain at least the most recent one.

Ah, by the way: This post is not in the least Newton-related. This is why it
says "Off Topic" in the subject line. So you might want to skip it.

You're still with me? OK...

This year, we won't be spending our summer vacations with the friends we've
been spending our summer vacations with for years.

You are wondering where on earth Facebook enters the picture? Well, if four
people, along with three children, want to spend their vacations together,
this requires a lot of synchronization. Especially if they don't exactly
live next door, which can result in the children's school holidays falling
in different time periods. Each parent having a different employer doesn't
make things easier. So far, though, we've always managed. Even though our
friends' youngest son is a boy scout who usually spends two weeks with his
fellow boy scouts during his school holidays. 

As usual we managed to synchronize things nicely. Unfortunately, the boy
scouts' trip had to be postponed, which happened way before we started the
synchronization process. Our friends weren't aware of this change during the
synchronization process because the boy scouts' leader only posted this info
on Facebook. 

Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem since our friends' son monitors
Facebook regularely. But he had rocked the boat the month before by spending
almost 150 bucks on internet access from his smartphone. Our friends, who
are a) not very rich and b) the provider's contractual partner, were fairly
annoyed, so they seized his smartphone and his computer for a month. The
pitiable boy had to spend his life literally Internet-less for a full month
in order to give him time to contemplate if money really DOES grow on trees.
This is why we were all blissfully unaware of this change for almost three
weeks.

When our friends finally learned of it, they managed to talk their employers
into postponing their vacations. Unfortunately, my wife was not as lucky. A
hospital staff schedule has to be organized months in advance, and shifting
your vacation simply isn't an option once it has been set.

I might be a dinosaur, but if I've learned one thing in my life, it's that
if you want people to know or to do something, you absolutely MUST TELL them
face to face (or what used to pass for "face to face" not so very long ago,
like e. g. a phone call) what you want them to know or to do. And, just to
make sure, you should better ask them afterwards if what they understood is
what you meant.

I admit that it's not Facebook's fault that this annoying issue happened.
I'm just extremely pi**ed if people I don't even know take it for granted
that I'm doing things the way they think they should be done, but do not
even bother to make sure I'm actually DOING them that way, let alone tell me
at least one single time what they expect me to do in the first place. 

I have relatives who fire up Facebook or Whatsapp on their smartphones if
they want to know where their 16 year old daughter is. Hello? Ever heard of
"where are you going", "when will you be back", and "I expect you to be home
by midnight at the latest"?

What the f*ck happened to good old phone calls and letters?

Modern times do have their benefits. Without the Internet, letting off steam
the way I just did would have been much more difficult. But I very often
wish some things, front and foremost TV sets and Facebook, had never been
invented.

Hgrmpf...

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de


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