Nice article, spoken like a true member of The FaceBorg.

Not only have I not joined Facebook, nor plan on joining Facebook, I have never owned a mobile cellular phone of any kind (remember when they were called carphones?). I must be a real eccentric.

As far as social networking, MySpace does the job nicely for me. I "accidently" joined four years ago, manage no more than fifty friends (who needs a million?), and check in every week or so.

Maybe when mobile devices and carrier plans really do work everywhere, recharge automatically in any kind of light, load up the internet at lightning speeds and is truly affordable, I might get one and possibly sign up to Facebook, so I can be poked every minute by strangers, spammers and bots who wanna friend me.

'til then, I'll remain happilly out of the loop.

I remember when they were car phones too. And I didn't have one until it became cheaper than using a regular phone (after 3 digit phone bill to my then long distance girlfriend, now wife - a $40 per month plan for free nights/weekends saved me a ridiculous amount of money). Then after we started living together I needed it for work, and now after a good 6 or 7 years with it it's just happened. But I remember getting weird looks because I didn't have one.

As for Facebook... well, I have no good reason for not joining, but as of yet I have no good reason to join either. We'll see. I'm not opposed, just indifferent (much like cell phones).

I think I held out on the cell phones because it's annoying enough when I'm busy at home and the phone rings... but not enough people call me on it for me to care (I train people to call the house and leave messages).

I don't know if I'm technically a luddite (in the modern sense, not the automatic loom sense), but I hate the idea of being always connected to the electronic world. I don't carry a cell phone, I don't belong to facebook, I don't have a laptop for the airport. I think my reason for avoiding facebook is perfectly rational: I don't want to. And people writing article about how unreasonable I am is not going to encourage me to change that stance.

Again, (repeating what the author said) you don't have to always be connected to the electronic world if you care not to. Login once a week, or once a month, if that's all you care to do. Like the author says, the most basic benefit (though there are others) is simply establishing your name on there, like in a phone book. Don't want just anybody finding you? There are quick and easy settings for that. Don't want to be spammed? They can't, unless you "add" them as a "friend" first. It facilitates in all sorts of ways my contact with friends and family. It facilitates the most the relationships with my closest friends and family, because I choose it to... I also have many not-so-close friends and many acquaintances on facebook. My level of interaction with them on facebook is about what you'd expect it to be with acquaintances - i.e., not much. But they are there if I want to contact them or see their photos or see their contact info (that they've CHOSEN to reveal) or hit them up for leads on new job possibilities. Added burden to me = zero. It's ridiculous how obvious and simple it is. Meanwhile, I'm uploading a new album of pictures of my ski vacation, and instead of emailing it out to addresses that may or may not be good, I'm just post the damn album. "SHOTGUN has posted a new album of his ski vacation" shows up in the little news feed ticker of my friends, and they decide whether they want to look at it. Probably only my closest friends and family do. I can block it from others, if I so choose, with a click of my mouse. But it's not in anybody's inbox, it's on my profile, permanently or as long as I choose it to be there, so at any point down the road my brother can go and check out pictures of my ski vacation, alongside my other albums, like he's sitting in my living room looking through ALL my photo albums, getting a better sense of my life, even though he's across the country. And you do as much or as little of this as you'd like. Meanwhile, not a single pedophile pries his way into your home and not a single Amber Alert is set off.

I'm no tech geek (at all, seriously. I have no intention of buying an HD TV anytime soon. Even the one I have is still the big, curved screen boxy kind. I just don't care), but 99% of the criticisms of Facebook are by people who don't use it and don't actually understand how it works.

Good, not-at-all patronizing argument there, shotgun. It's impossible that I don't like facebook - I just don't understand how it works. I don't use it because I spend all day at work on my computer; why would I want to do my socializing there, too? Or am I misunderstanding how it works?

Thanks! I thought it a good argument too. I would say that considering that it appears you are doing something non-work related on a computer at this very moment, you are not completely averse to such a thing, and considering that you still think of it as "socializing on facebook", instead of adding convenient tools that is simply like email on steroids, in addition to (as another slate article just put it) an address book on steroids and with more nuance, as well as a supercharged calendar that can change and be adjusted and allow you to send out invitations to your own large event like a breeze, and rsvp functions built in, and on and on and on and on, all of these slick tools and intuitive-as-hell features creating a sort of "organizational" toolbox to your social relationships that already exist in real life and were not created by facebook but simply augmented by it, as opposed to what you seem to see as a bunch of people hanging out on a website and chatting, and all of this is certainly no more work than to scan fray posts and compose answers and possibly a lot more rewarding, yes I do think you might be misunderstanding how it works. Was that less patronizing?

But don't use it. That's quite alright by me. I'm as indifferent to that as I'd be to someone who told me they don't use a cell phone. But I do defend with a touch of annoyance, I admit, just like I would be if someone told me they don't trust electricity because they're afraid it leaks out of the sockets into their homes.

Yup, you're so indifferent that you're spending your day telling people that they're not conceptualizing facebook correctly, where "correctly"="the way I see it." Whatever ...

Yeah, I think "correctly" = "the way I see it" probably has some validity in this instance.

To your credit though, you elicited a little introspection from me: I don't care that my grandmother or mother aren't on facebook. They don't even use the internet. I don't care that that homeless guy isn't on facebook; he doesn't even have a place to sleep. And if somebody's a true misanthrope who cares not a wit at communication, it wouldn't even occur to me that they should be on facebook. Ditto if you are Amish.

But if you are a savvy (or even just a regular) internet user - as I bet you are - and you seem to be bright enough, and you care about easy tools to connect with your social network, and you are reading Slate and reading the Fray and posting comments, resentful comments where you take the time to snipe at the technology author for writing about the progression of technology, and say "I'm not on Facebook and I don't ever plan to be!" - well, it just struck a chord with me. My grandmother of course wouldn't even be aware of Slate, much less know how to post here. You, on the other hand - I'm willing to bet - seem to exhibit just the kind of affectation that the author was describing. You are making a statement.

There's this misconception about time-wasting distraction vs. organizational tool, which only stems from a lack of familiarity. Myspace is a near useless time waster (and the first poster says he uses it! With 50 friends!) Facebook can also waste a lot of your time, if you choose, but it is far moreso a networking and organizational tool. If you don't care about those things, then you don't care about those things, but that hasn't been the objections I've seen raised here. The objections have been of the "time wasting" / "I don't need to be poked/spammed" variety. This is like insisting you'll never use Outlook because you don't need to be distracted by that little paperclip helper guy.

On the other hand, if your entire social circle consists of only a handful of people (and why shouldn't it? There's nothing wrong with that, and perhaps they are close relationships, where nothing could be gained from a quick scan of their new baby pictures while you are at work), then facebook would have limited value to you. On the other hand if your social circle is a crazy-quilt of separate, overlapping sub-circles of college friends, family, coworkers, and romantic connections, many who know each other, and are always getting together, then it is a genuinely useful tool, and a fun one at that, and not just a place to post funny comments (Myspace).

In any case, your resistance is futile. I'll be seeing you on Facebook within 3 years, phritz.

I'd dislike your tone, were it not for one phrase in there. 'a true misanthrope who cares not a wit at communication' yup, that's me. It makes me think more of you that you would realise there are others for whom Facebook and the like hold no value.

The original article however, makes no such caveats. Everyone is exactly the same, and should join the crowd. There are many good reasons for using it, just as there are many similarly good reasons for not.

There is a degree of phobia involved for some people, and some degree of misunderstanding as well. But none of the things anyone has said they use Facebook for apply universally.

I'm sorry, but you're mistaken, shotgun, about how easy and inuitive it is to use Facebook's privacy tools. As a Facebooker, I have been spammed on my real e-mail by, I suppose, some bot that cracked into facebook and got my e-mail. I certainly did not friend the spammer but that didn't stop the spamming.

Second, it's true that you can prevent whomever you want from doing/seeing whatever they want re: your profile. But easy? No. If I want to prevent certain friends from seeing certain things, I have to manually type in each person's name that I want to exclude. That's a lot of names, since (like so many people) a lot of my friends are not really Friends in the true sense, but are acquaintances, professional colleagues, etc. There are lots of things I wouldn't want these people to see. And yes, I know -- I CAN prevent them. But what a PAIN. It's just not true that it's easy.

Next is the whole issue of data-collection. It creeps me out that the Facebook people have all this information about me and there's nothing I can do about it. I've noticed that people under 30 don't find this the least bit alarming; I really don't understand that.

I hear what you're saying about FB's organizational tools. For people whose lives are complex enough to need that, enjoy. For me, I don't need "e-mail on steroids" or any of those other nifty tools.

Again, I do understand how Facebook works. I'm on Facebook. I get it. But in fact, I wish I wasn't on Facebook. Deleting my profile now (oh, and to delete my profile you have to jump through hoops; all you easily do is deactivate you're account) would be weird. I'd have to explain that to a lot of people. I don't want to do that, not worth the trouble. So for now, I'm stuck unwillingly on Facebook.

"FaceBorg" ftw!