I've been playing Texas Hold 'Em and Mafia Wars when I'm bored, otherwise, I don't bother with much else on there ...

mafia wars is god.

except to keep in touch with old friends who live all over the place.

this is what i thought, I do use it to keep in touch with my old school friends but... there's only so many 'hey look at this great day we had, you were free but hey, we didnt ask you cuz we dont care about you anymore!" albums I can take.

I shit talk coworkers on facebook and leave pictures tagged.  I also don't always stay civil, unless I get called out on it posting on someone else's stuff.

No one follows those rules. I commented on one of 13Chems pics that she should eat a little more and more often and one of her little 30-something Tejas clingy sycophants decided it appropriate to insult my mother.

Fuck Facebook etiquette. It's on.

But Ana disapproves of eating!

Fuck Ana too.

Yeah, you hear that Sakhi?
FUCK ANA!!!
... IN THE ASS!!!

Facebook worries me due to its ultra-helpful invasiveness.
The "suggest a friend" thing really weirds me out. It kept asking if it could root through my email to scour it for friends and I kept saying no. Finally it stopped asking me this question and soon enough I start seeing people who I've only ever been in email contact with (former employment contacts, etc.) appearing on my list. That's not really cool with me. I ignored that for a while, but the next time I used "suggest a friend" I was multitasking and I noticed that it was suggesting as a friend for me a DJ I'd recently been looking up info on and downloading the music of. I had zero connection to the DJ - we have no common friends and I never even emailed him - the only connection was the fact that his name was in my cache and I had a tab open with his name in it.

That shit is Big Brother.
I'm phasing myself off facebook these days.

All it takes is for one of your friends or friend of friend  or friend of friend's friend to have had contact with that dj...

Also, during the sign up process if you click the wrong thing...you give fb the email contacts from your webbased email accounts. So while it may keep asking you to go though your email...you might of given it premission already. If nobody else on your firends list could be in contact with those ex work contacts then you might of fucked up during signup.

If just ONE of your firends list knew ONE of the ex work contacts and they gave access to their email contacts...and youre in those contacts...youre going to get suggestions.

FB aint really that evil when it comes to cookies.

I'm less concerned with facebook because it pretty much lays open the data mining that people are conducting whenever we use other internet services like gmail, google, bling, etc. 

Also, I'm not particularly concerned about facebook because no matter how careful I am with my personal information, corporations are not nearly as careful.  I've received multiple notices over the years along the lines of, "Sorry!  We didn't bother protecting your personal information and published it all over the internet.  Have a credit report on us!"

I just feel like for me personally at least the negatives outweigh the positives in the generally neutral world of facebook.
Maybe I'm just too antisocial for social networking.

All it takes is for one of your friends or friend of friend  or friend of friend's friend to have had contact with that dj...

Also, during the sign up process if you click the wrong thing...you give fb the email contacts from your webbased email accounts. So while it may keep asking you to go though your email...you might of given it premission already. If nobody else on your firends list could be in contact with those ex work contacts then you might of fucked up during signup.

If just ONE of your firends list knew ONE of the ex work contacts and they gave access to their email contacts...and youre in those contacts...youre going to get suggestions.

FB aint really that evil when it comes to cookies.

Where's the grammar cop when I need him!?!?!
Someone, go get Big Brother!

If a gave a shit, id try grammar properly.

Fuck Ana too.

Yeah, you hear that Sakhi?
FUCK ANA!!!
... IN THE ASS!!!

Pfft, wouldn't you rather stuff her mouth? Damn fatties...

Where's the grammar cop when I need him!?!?!

Speaking of which, check out this beauty:

...I noticed that it was suggesting as a friend for me a DJ I'd recently been looking up info on and downloading the music of.

Hello terminal prepositions!

Fuck Ana too.

Yeah, you hear that Sakhi?
FUCK ANA!!!
... IN THE ASS!!!

Pfft, wouldn't you rather stuff her mouth? Damn fatties...

Can't have Anal without Ana...

Too true, and I thought of that; didn't want to overload the youngster ...

except to keep in touch with old friends who live all over the place. i'm bad with email. plus, with facebook you can just post on a wall to say "hey, have a great birthday." instead of some long-winded mostly forced email along the lines of "how are you! it's been too long, sorry i've been mia, but..." being 'anti-socially social' is my game.

Seriously.

I dig that aspect as well, actually.

I think it was posted at the lamebook thing, but facebook seriously is where friendships go to die.
I still feel like If you're relying on facebook as your sole method of staying in contact with old friends, then you guys really aren't friends any more...

I've also found facebook to be far more helpful in re-acquainting me with people I'm far happier having lost touch with than to keep me in contact with good friends who I'd stay in contact with anyway. Maybe the friends I've made just haven't been as good as the friends you guys have. Or maybe I'm just a dick.

The only thing I use facebook for is so I can have parties/events and their locations written down for me. I tend to forget details like that and it's useful to just look that crap up before heading out the door.

A pocket planner is less tedious, you know ...

I'm also cheap as fuck.

I still feel like If you're relying on facebook as your sole method of staying in contact with old friends, then you guys really aren't friends any more...

Abso-fucking-lutely. But you know what? That's fine with me. I've lived several places over the years, made lots of friends, and facebook allows me to keep in contact with them, even if only slightly. It means that when I go back to Spain next year, I'll be able to pre-arrange to see a bunch of the people I'd be happy to run into, which I wasn't able to do last time I was there.

Also, living on an island where there's a large transient population (people come, people go, people come back, people go away to school, etc), fb is pretty handy for staying somewhat connected with that lot.

Well, there's THAT too ...

And then there's Loaded-Gun, which is useful for rubbing how awesome your life is into other people's faces.

Well, there's THAT too ...

And then there's Loaded-Gun, which is useful for rubbing how awesome your life is into other people's faces.

Damn,?I?wish?I?though?of?that,?the?only?thing?I?could?think?of?burning?Si?on?was?his?englishness.?And?thats totally weak.

You mean it's not for looking at Mosh's car?

I think it was posted at the lamebook thing, but facebook seriously is where friendships go to die.
I still feel like If you're relying on facebook as your sole method of staying in contact with old friends, then you guys really aren't friends any more...

I've also found facebook to be far more helpful in re-acquainting me with people I'm far happier having lost touch with than to keep me in contact with good friends who I'd stay in contact with anyway. Maybe the friends I've made just haven't been as good as the friends you guys have. Or maybe I'm just a dick.

The only thing I use facebook for is so I can have parties/events and their locations written down for me. I tend to forget details like that and it's useful to just look that crap up before heading out the door.

Friends come and go constantly.  My life has been a transient one since I started making friends.  I signed up for a Facebook account right when it first opened, because it gave me something I didn't have before, a singular way to keep in touch with people that didn't require an exhausting amount of effort.  I've made a lot of friends and lost a lot of them (in the sense that you are describing friendship).  I still want to "stay in touch" with these people, because likely the things that brought us together in the first place didn't change, but our mutual location did.  And like has been mentioned (for Travel, Parties, etc.) when mutual location re-aligns, it's easier to get back together if you already have all of their info (Address, Phone Number, Email) all in one place.  And in the meantime while you are physically separated, you can still share photos and shoot the shit (much in the way all of us do here).

a singular way to keep in touch with people

Singular indeed, considering I've lost touch with more people this way than when it was just email...

I mean I understand and all, it's just that Facebook's primary job in my life (apart from reacquainting me with people I thought I'd happily succeeded in losing touch with) is to remind me that I've lost touch with people I used to be good friends with and make me feel guilty that I'm not up for hanging out with them anymore when we're in the same area and make me feel obliged to hang out with them if they contact me or if they find out I'm going to be in their area. I don't really need that. Like I said earlier this is probably just me being a dick but, what the hell, c'est moi.

It seems like a happy place for voyeurs and exhibitionists, but for me personally I can only really use it as a glorified address book. I do get the point that it's a good way to keep the channels open sort of so if you're in an area, you'll have people you know in the area. I do see that there are some advantages to it. There are also disadvantages, though. For me the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. If others like it then more power to them. Some people like twitter too and I find that ridiculous, but hey it's a free country. Some people like Kenny G. I'm cool with it.