It's actually not a ref. Manchester doesn't have to exterminate the little buggers, just learn to play the silly game.. sheesh..
(ducking and running!) rofl.....
Facebook again. Does everyone of my friends (hint: single digit) has to know whatever I do?!
I find that Facebook is like any other social media, or for that matter, any other interactive site- even good ole Forums about Arduino.. it's what you make of it. Last week I did the photography for a local community theater production, I've done several for the troupe. Facebook is a perfect outlet for that type of thing. In addition, I now live far away from the tiny town in Wisconsin where I grew up, and I've found Facebook is good way to see what's going on around the old stomping grounds. Last but not least, the thing I've got is kind of rare, via facebook groups, I've found quite a number of other people facing this thing, it's quite useful in that respect.. I'd not be part of the patient network that I am were it not for Facebook.. up until FB, things were too scattered.
It's easy to demonize, but I find the whole social media thing very interesting.. including where the lines of privacy lie as well as what we now consider to be "private". Most of the hullabulloo is simply that they use a script to scan the text of your posts, looking for keywords, and based upon finding which keywords, they direct ads accordingly. I mention "Canon", and I'll be sure to get a photography-related adstream. I mention Crohns, and I get Pharma companies. It's not really an invasion as far as I am concerned, more like targeted marketing.
Anyway, I guess there's more important things going on in Manchester right now than me ribbing them about their football team..
Maybe this post should be in the "last purchase" thread - as I've recently bought this T-shirt, but it seems appropiate response in a slight OffTopic sort of way)
Well, one could refer to this very forum (as it's basically a BBS model a couple decades old) as a prototype for "social media".
None of us are media producers.. yet we are producing media which is read by others. I'd definitely refer to quite a few conversations (particularly in Bar Sport and General) as social.. poking fun at a football team, you really don't get much more stereotypically "social", do you?
Facebook's put a pretty bow on it and tied some of the ends together.. not bad. It attracts a lot of, ummm... interesting characters, however.. some of whom normally don't see much daylight. I think they'd find a bizarre obsession no matter what it was..eighty cats maybe, or collecting fossilized dung. I'm too much a woods kid to not get out.. I pay for it, but for a couple of days a year I still love doing the tent-and-fire thing. We took the kids "camping" (Yogi Bear Campground.. cringe...) the last few days, spent the majority of it getting a bit of a sunburn while being harassed by these dang Bass that interrupted my pleasant Fishing with a bunch of tedious Catching. The scary part were the "campers" with iPad2's complaining about WiFi reception sparring with what appeared to be wandering bands of twelve-year-old "crips".
Flat water kayaking is where you look at that, smile, and five minutes later you're in some little cove with a bass rod propped between your toes, your hat pulled down just a bit, and you spend the next hour trying to remember if the particular bird you are hearing is a kildeer or maybe that was a finch... Even on Yogi's place, there's a lake. Where there's a lake, there's an "opposite side" or "smack dab in the middle" or "over there near the swamp" where the kids, iPads, and annoying nonsense can be forgotten for a few minutes and all that matters is how much bait you have left, and if you still have a beer left in the bulkhead 
Facebook's not a bad thing, it's just ike anything else..