I have a small face book account of a little over 100 friends. When I opened my face book account I thought it was an excellent place to keep up with relatives.
When you're on face book other people find you. So now I not only have family but former students, colleagues and other people I know.
I found that the family contact more or less dried up. Many other people are lurkers. I don't know if they follow me at all.
I do use face book to publicize my blog. I do click on things I like. For example a former student was our city archivist and he posts all kinds of photos. I have another friend who is a photographer. David takes many good photos and I tell him I like them. I wish people happy birthday, but I rarely post anything.
All of this is very harmless.
However, there are a couple of friends who find themselves deep into right wing politics so there are times I get many despicable messages. They get these messages from some site and then pass them on over their face book page. They haven't checked these messages for any validity at all. I don't like getting racist messages. I don't like messages that criticize politicians in a personal way. Debate the issues but leave the mudslinging out of it. It's difficult enough for a politician to serve as well as get abuse. I get messages on the economy that have no basis whatsoever. Whoever wrote the message did not do any research whatsoever. They listened to somebody spout off. They will not look at government statistics as they have the mistaken idea that these statistics come directly from the political party. These statistics are generated by the people who do the actual work of running the country.
For two of my friends , I think I'm going to have to find out how to unfriend somebody.
What do you do when you get unwanted face book messages?
