Is social networking a good thing or bad?

[Amandistan]

While the internet and social networking  has many good thing.. such as catching up with old friends, sharing memories with new friends etc.   

It also has many bad qualities that I believe are self-destructive. For instance behind a keyboard people say what they would never to your face. Then there is the unfriending thing and not accepting friendships, blocking. It send the message that "I don't like you. not even enough to want you to exist on my fb page.". 

Then the most destructive is the internet argument. Once in, many become addicted.

personally, I sometimes wish it did not exist.  Many of days, I have felt happy but it's been ruined by the internet. 

What are your thoughts?   Is it good, bad or both? 

[Pol]

Its both good and bad Imo. People have took an unbelievable amount of abuse from trolls, deaths threats and the sickest of comments. Its also being used by beasts terrorists and extremists.
Of course there are many good sides, a have met a few good people through this site so I'm not gonna knock the positive power of the internet

[Master Ray]

For me, social networking is what you do with it, what you add to it and what you share with it.

For example, the dreaded Facebook.  There are no personal details on my page except my birthday (you know, in case people want to send me nice messages...  )... I have about 25 friends on there, the lowest number of all my mutual 'friends'.  I don't accept requests from anyone I don't actually know.  And yes, I know that FB harvest your information... newsflash, if you ever did anything on the internet anywhere, you've left a trail that will get back to others... FB has enabled me to get back in touch with great friends I'd lost and keeps me in touch with others of far-off shores. Its far from perfect but I'm happy with it.

Likewise, this fine Forum... now, my name ain't Ray (although I do like to be called 'Master' in other certain scenarios, but we won't get into that right now   ) but that pseudonym allows me to be 'free' to talk freely, much more so than FB.  A few fine folks here know my real name and have my personal deets.  I'm fine with that.   And if any of those folks subjected me to abuse, I'd be upset about it.  Likewise, my FB pals, all of whom I actually know in the real world... but if that happened, I'd take it on the chin, block them or whatever, FOAD etc...

I truly don't understand why anyone would subject themselves or their feelings to social networking anymore than that.  Who needs 500 'friends' when you got a few great ones?

I've had a bit of PM abuse on this site.  Should I give a ****?  Nope.  It's just bullshit floating around in the Internet nethersphere.  And I regard that in the same way as if I got it from any other keyboard cyber-warrior, as opposed to a 'real person'.

If it ain't coming from proper flesh and blood, it's just binary code bullshit.

Anyway, that's what I came up with after a few pints and a chicken bhuna.  Hope it made sense.

 

[Johnz]

I agree with Ray and Pol. It really is what you want it to be. I find it useful for some things but I never post very personal stuff on there. There are some groups that I'm part of that provide me with information that would be hard to get otherwise and I have met some interesting people that way.

Luckily I don't have regular internet access so I don't have time to get involved in all the pointless arguments. Life is too short to argue with faceless strangers over unimportant things.