Topic: Does having a Facebook account lower your IQ?

[Corbomite]

Stupid? These yahoos are candidates for the Darwin Award! 

[Nemesis]

Hey, did y'all know "we" have a FB page?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/DynaverseNet/153228018072175?ref=br_rs
Does this lower all of our IQs?

Explains why I've felt subpar lately. DAMN YOU FREY! (or whoever made that page).

[TAnimaL]

I think it works the other way around - stupid people are drawn towards more and more FB, like moths to a flame. Since you don't use it Nemesis, you're safe... as long as you resist....

[Nemesis]

How can I resist when there is nothing there TO resist from my viewpoint?  Facebook has about as much appeal to me as having sex with a belt sander.  Not at all.  I'm a very private person and Facebook is the antithesis of that. 

[Corbomite]

I was speaking with an acquaintance after all the NSA, corporate information farming/surveillance stuff broke and was pretty amazed at his total lack of concern or interest in the issue.

He said, "What can you do? I don't really care, I'm not doing anything illegal and I have nothing to hide."

I replied, "Neither am I, but I don't have that much I'm really interested in sharing either."

The fact that people are willing giving away the rights our ancestors fought so hard to aquire baffles me. People actually have no problem being virtually stalked everywhere they go. They actually feel less important if someone isn't keeping a constant tab on their lives.

[Nemesis]

At the risk of Godwinning the thread.  The Jews had nothing to hide until someone came along that needed victims then they were easy to find. 

[knightstorm]

Facebook has about as much appeal to me as having sex with a belt sander.

So, would pleasuring yourself with a spinning lathe have greater or lesser appeal to you than facebook?

[Brush Wolf]

How can I resist when there is nothing there TO resist from my viewpoint?  Facebook has about as much appeal to me as having sex with a belt sander.  Not at all.  I'm a very private person and Facebook is the antithesis of that. 

I don't see the appeal either. I do have an account but I really can't remember the last time I put something on it. I mainly use it to enter contests.

At the risk of Godwinning the thread.  The Jews had nothing to hide until someone came along that needed victims then they were easy to find. 

I don't feel that Godwin's Law really applies here with the generally polite discussions we have.

[Nemesis]

One of the things that I see coming with all the government collected data is profiling.  A crime will be committed and a profile of the suspect will be made on usually very limited information.  Then they will search the citizen database of detailed profiles and that will be the suspect list.  Lots more Brandon Mayfields to come.

[TAnimaL]

Actually, I do think this is getting dangerously close to "Godwin's Law, " in that every person of Jewish heritage I know would take your comment poorly and historically inaccurate. The Jewish people had been prejudiced against, segregated, blamed and otherwise mistreated for centuries; the nazis used antisemitism to the extreme, but those hatreds were long-standing. Your statement Nemesis seems to suggest that they should have been hiding so as not to be seen; in this case, the 1930s equivalent of "staying off FB" for them would have meant not gooing to synagouge or otherwise going publlic with their beliefs.

This is supposed to be a funny "why I hate FB" thread, which I totally get. My own wife hates the thing and wants nothing to do with it, but spinning it into quasi-serious paranoia about the NSA is  a bit much. Am i worried about overreach by the NSA, as well as net neutrality? Sure. I am equally as worried by the corporate data-gathering and manipulation? Almost more so, but I think facebook, hate it or not, is really not a big concern in these issues. It's like hating a AOL chat room, who cares?

[Nemesis]

I'm very much aware of the history of purges and restrictions of employment for the Jews in Europe, how they were blamed for spreading plagues.  Forced baptisms (then charged with apostasy for continuing in their own religion).  And so forth.

But censuses have for a long time been used to gather a lot more information than just how many people you have.  Want to purge the Jews just go through the census records which made it easy for the Germans.  I don't fully fill out census forms as I leave blank anything I don't think the government has a real need to know. 

Just attending the church or religious organization of your choice doesn't get  you on government lists in most countries (Germany is an exception as they have a Church tax you pay). 

Want to purge D&D players get the NSA to do a data search.  Think that left handed redheads are genetically inferior the NSA could probably get most of them for you.  Facebook and similar things are huge sources of personal data.  Probably second only to credit cards, air miles cards and the like. 

I'm against the rampant gathering of our personal data for the financial gain of companies and the prying of the government.  They buy and sell OUR data for their benefit without our willing permission.  I've had retailers for example insist that if I don't give them a phone number their is no warranty (which is not what the law says, a homeless person still gets a warranty). 

When you are a criminal suspect with enough evidence to convince a judge that you might well be guilty THEN the government can get the warrants to tap your phone etc.  Then that data should be restricted to use in investigating your alleged crimes and only accessible by the investigators who should not be in anyway connected with you. 

[knightstorm]

Back to the topic of facebook idiocy, this criminal mastermind robbed a bank, and then posted selfies of himself on facebook, posing with the guns in the same outfit he wore while robbing the bank.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bank-robber-posts-facebook-gun-selfies-687432

[Nemesis]

And now Facebook is shown to cause depression in heavy users.

Link to full article

[Lono]

Sadly - almost all of Mensa has moved to bookface - forcing my hand.

I really did like Google+ when it first came out (and before it attempted to emulate its awful competitor) it was a really slick interface that allowed me to effortlessly follow the leaders in both science and science-fiction!