new thread
To drive the Washington DC Naval yard shooting close to home
I found out tonight a relative of mine, who has been
in the Navy for the last 18 years was three buildings
away from the shooting. He is fine tonight.
Thank God for that. And I pray for all who were affected by this tragedy. God bless them all.
Ted
Thank you.
I would add I found this morning I have a second relaitve who
is also working in Washington DC for the Coast Guard. She is
also alright.
Both of these relatives I heard that they were Ok through Facebook. I'm amazed at how much of this information is
coming through Facebook.
In recent months i've had a number of friends from College and
post college that i've head about their deaths through Facebook.
That is one of the great things about Facebook. I was not a
big fan of Facebook but i'm starting to warm up to it.
I agree with you - Facebook is a great way to be connected with folks you would otherwise lose track of - but it would be even better if it wasn't full of other nonsense - but I guess we take the good with the bad and come out ahead...
Glad your people are OK in DC...
Thank you.
I've never unfriended anyone on Facebook. Rather i've perfected the art of going through my news feed and reading what interests
me and skipping those individuals i've already learned are worthy
of being skipped over. But i've never unfriended anyone since
if you have Social Fixer you can tell who unfriended you.
Twice I got a bit active with Facebook and twice now I've pulled back. The reason both times was TMI. It's not easy to control what the site does with information you send out and get in, because though the tools are there, Facebook is a moving target. Their rules are always changing.
So now I have one Facebook friend, my husband. And Facebook repeatedly tells him his friend Bill only has one friend, begging him to find poor Bill more friends. Poor Bill. If Mark Zuckerberg thinks I need more friends, maybe he would want to be my friend. He lives on my street. Maybe I should go down to his house, knock on his door, and ask him if he would be my real world friend.
Bill
Right now i've got 133 friends on facebook.
I've also perfected the art of reviewing my news
feed and ignoring those indiciduals who i'm not
really interested in. I prefer to just
ignore their posts rather than unfriend someone.
(If you've got social fixer it will tell you
when someone unfriends you.
It's not easy to control what the site does with information you send out and get in, because though the tools are there, Facebook is a moving target. Their rules are always changing.
I don't post any "private" information on Facebook. I know hoe
bad security is on Facebook so I post zero "private" information.
I also don't do any Facebook apps, also don't do any Facebook
games.
What a brilliant metaphorical splash of cold water, Bill!
My history with Facebook has followed a course at least vaguely similar to your own, having twice deactivated my account, but eventually reactivating it as a way to keep in touch with people I would otherwise have no means of contacting (conveniently, at any rate). My wife and I have recently discussed creating a family blog, and providing access to people by invitation only. In addition to the privacy concerns regarding Facebook, I've also found it to be largely such a time wasting, soul sucking, unnecessary modern contrivance that I feel my path winding back in the direction of either another deactivation, or at least a significant culling of my "friends" list. Indeed, the I think Facebook's hijacking of the word "friend" is perhaps one of the most insidious linguistic tragedies of our era.
Noting the irony, would you mind if I used your photo to help make my point, prior to said culling and/or deactivation?
Thanks for your exquisite and unflagging Bill-ness :)
Cheers,
Val
My general attitude right now is to not unfreind anyone.
In addition to those unfriends which are listed in Social Fixer
I want to hold onto to this connection to past friends/
acquantences/relatives because in the next several decades you
never know who is going to die and for many of these people
Facebook is the only connection I have to them.
Another way to look at is scanning Facebook sure beats the heck
out of scanning a number of newspaper Obituaries to find out who
you know that has died. I've had too many people I know who died
and I didn't find out about it until 9 months to year later.
Facebook may be a time waster but scanning obituaries in a bunch of different newspapers wastes even more time.
A couple of other points I would make about facebook,
1. It is now becoming common practice for someone who dies
that the family/friens will keep your facebook page up as a memorial.
2. Your facebook page may be the only method your family has to reach many of your friends, family and co-workers from past
jobs. Look at it as keeping a facebook page with friends makes
it easier on you family when it comes to funeral arrangements.
As it is we have a very flawed system for notifying people that
someone they knew died. And i've had too many instances where
I found out years later that someone died.
(I would mention that the usual custom is to list death notices in the paper of record in the area. Often that is not followed which makes learning of deaths difficult. Also you do have deaths that are not listed on line.)
Hmmmm, I have to admit never thinking of Facebook as a way to find dead people so this is a first for me.lol.Frankly I keep a very small friends list by today's standards as I can't think of any conceivable way to keep in contact with hundreds or thousands of friends! Just ain't that many hours in the day.Cheers
Mârk
I have a number of friends from older organizations as well as from college, so far i've learned of four of those friends
who have died in in the past year. And if it weren't for
Facebook I would not have known they died.
That is one of the reasons why I have 133 friends now and while
I may disagree with them politically I just ignore their posts
and keep them as friends. Who knows what information they
will supply in the future that i'll need to know. (i.e. deaths,
etc.)
For example I heard about two of the deaths from a friend who used to go to my college, has since moved to New Hampshire and
the only contact information I have for him is through Facebook.
Another death I heard about from a girl friend of the deceased
(who lives here in Albany), she lives in California but spends much time here in Albany). And then there is another friend who
died, they used to live in Rhode Island, moved to Florida, then
to California. All these individuals had one thing in common......Facebook. And that was critical in notifying people
of their deaths. A year ago I never would have conceived of this
happening but, it did.
Welcome to 2013. This is why I won't unfriend anyone. Instead
i've perfected the art of browsing my newsfeed and ignoring the
posts i choose to ignore.
I generally hate Facebook but it's an excellent tool for keeping
in contact with old friends. (Even with all the crap that is
posted.)
Maybe you're onto something... You should launch Deathbook, make millions, and retire early!
--Val
Why? Facebook already does that.
I would point out these were friends that I spent many weekends
hiking/mountain climbing/biking/skiing/etc.
In other cases they were friends who were into science fiction
and we spent many weekends together at conventions and club functions.
But even though they moved out of state I still value all thsoe
good times we had in past years. We probably would have seen more of each other if life hadn't intervened. (I moved to Albany NY, some of these friends moved to Arizona, New Hampshire,
Florida, California, etc. Also many them including me got married, found new interests, etc.
But i'll always value those old friendships. And it's nice to stay in touch with them. And now that i'm 59 years old and have
seen alot of friends/relatives/etc. die I deeply value all those
friends from past organizations, from college, etc. Life is far too short to just blow off all those friends I had in years gone by. There are very few friends from high school that i'm
interested in remaining in contact with (exactly two),
on the other hand there are a number of friends in college I would liek to remain in contact with. it comes with my realization that i'm getting old and won't be alive forever.
Keep in mind many of these friends we'd go hiking, mountain climbing, biking, etc. and spend hundreds of weeekends together
in these mutual pursuits.
Thanks!
I have a Facebook page for people who are new to the Internet and don't know about finding stuff on Google. Anyone who wants to find me who knows about Google can just put my name there. I have that "dream" picture on my Facebook page.
My experience has been that reconnecting with people who I haven't seen since the Eisenhower Administration is pointless, because their interests and mine have changed so much in the last 55 years. They truly are now strangers. Very few have ever contacted me, although I've been on the Internet for 17 years now. As for the few who have, as I just said, we soon learn we have nothing in common to share anymore. Facebook is great for finding friends you had back before there were space satellites and color television, but why?
There is some discussion in this thread about how great Facebook is for finding out about dead people. Anyone who is a friend (I define as someone who I correspond with or hear about at least once a month) I will soon miss, or someone we both know will miss, and I will learn of their passing. As for others, whether they die, lose interest in me, move out of town, or whatever, is irrelevant. They just disappear. I'm not going to spend many hours a week on a site just so I will learn what became of a few such people a year, should they croak. I don't read the dozens of daily obits in the San Francisco Chronicle either. For awhile I did, and I never saw one person I knew there. It was a waste of time.
Now my uncle was an undertaker, and he was intensely interested in "about to be dead" people. Neither of us were ever that interested in people post-mortem.
Coast to Coast Road Trip on the Lincoln Highway
Culling that list is hard. Some people mostly post about their business, their politics, or people they know and you don't. You may share other interests with them, but Facebook throws it all at you in one disorganized mess. Google may be the world's largest collection of Information, but Facebook is the world's largest collection of Too Much Information.
Yeah, one has to realize the "friends" on Facebook are not friends, they are people whose web stuff you are regularly reading at the time. Getting rid of a friend by saying, "F-- off, I don't want to hear from you anymore," is not at all the same as telling someone you aren't going to look at their web site for now.
Sure, I could have tracked everyone who looked at my Lincoln Highway pictures and written all who declined out of my life. But why would I bother? Not only would it be a waste of time better spent doing something else, but it would smack of excessive nosiness. A reputation for excessive nosiness can result in losing other friends that one might have hoped to have kept!
Oh, by all means be my guest!
My pleasure. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, "I might as well be me. Everyone else is taken!"
Bill
Hi LHIA,
Yes, Facebook is fine as long as you keep your posts only visible to your friends. When a friend annoys you, you just block them from accessing your page. Facebook is definitely great otherwise.
Ted
My daughter was sent home from school because her BF's father was one of the 12 killed. I never met the man, and now I can't. From what I understand, he didn't even work there. Wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose.
My daughter still has to go back to school this evening for a venture scout recruitment event, and says she will go. Her BF was supposed to come and help, but I doubt that he will be there, somehow.
The news is confused about the perp. First they said there were three shooters, then two, and now only one. They said he was fired as a contractor, and now they are saying he had only started at the Navy Yard a week ago, although I suppose both could be true. They said he was ex-Navy, but now it seems he had only been a reserve. One credible report said his ex-GF worked there and had just dumped him. OTOH, now they are saying the VA were treating him for 'voices in his head', so he was definitely nuts, but still had a valid pass to get in there. Some reports said that he had a police record as well. And they let him in carrying a shotgun, although at first the media said he used an assault rifle, but apparently it wasn't.
How could he be allowed to still have a pass with a record and mental illness? And how did he get the shotgun inside?
Very sorry to hear there was a connection in some way to you of one of those killed yesterday.Always a tragedy when things like this happen. As for the media you'd think they'd get their facts straight before reporting this stuff but the news room is a joke anymore so goes with the territory.Thankfully there are other outlets for information but still have to take most with a grain of salt.Cheers
Mârk
They really can't wait to get the facts straight. They have to report on what they now at the time.
Look at it this way: a shooting occurs at 8:30 in the morning.
The news then has to report that a 14 block radius around
the shooting site is locked down. No traffic in or out, schools
are in lockdown, all residents/employees/etc. are told to
shelter in place. Relatives get anqious, parents get very concerned about there kids. The media at that point has to report what they know even if it is incomplete or inacccurate.
if they don't people in the area will create their own theories
and they will go viral on the internet, on Face book, On Twitter,
etc. Keep in mind in the abscence of information on radio/tv people will create their own information which will often
be wildly wrong.
Also the information on these breaking news stories is often
incomplete and contain errors, but they will have much less errors than what rumor mill/Facebook/Twitter/the Internet will
generate in the abscence of information.
Keep in mind too with stories like this it often takes a good
24-48 hours to really flesh out the details.
But remember in this case you had a good sized section of
the city shut down and details had to be given on why this
was done. AFter all you have kids in school there,
people who work there, relatives who live there.
I can see you point to an extent but shabby reporting does no one any good.Better to report what is known accurate even if many details are missing.To keep readjusting the so called facts over and over makes it look like they just want to say something to beat the other outlet to some "way out" conclusion. There also is no need for wall to wall coverage when nothing new is known.Reports the facts when they are verified and they shouldn't be bothered by what all the conspiracy theorists say on the net.I mean they reported news decades ago before there was the internet and people got their information.Cheers
Mârk
Then you'll have the rumor mill/internet/facebook/twitter
filling in their own blacks (and then information qill be
1,000 times more inaccurate.)
We see this time and time again when information on stuff like this is with-held.
Yes there is. In the abscense of information the rumor mill/
internet/face book/twitter will fill in the blanks and it will go viral very fast.
It used to be if one network didn't report on it another network
would do it for them. Now the internet will do it. And the internet will do it faster.
What is happening now is the traditional news media, who BTW are going bust, are reducing their standards to those of less reputable sources, or even just repeating them as if they knew what they were talking about.
One other thing i'd also mention here, it's critical that the
media report what they know when they know it to keep the phones
clear. If the media didn't report the details then you'd have
people in the affected area flooding the phones to the point
where phone system crashes. (During crisis local authorities will often ask people to avoid using the phone to keep the lines clear.)
Finally I would mention that TV and radio stations are licensed to serve the community in the "public interest." If they
don't cover major breaking stories like the Washington DC shooting they'll hear about it at license renewal time.
The police rely on the tv/radio stations to keep the public informed to keep the police from getting flooded with the
inquiries.
There is nothing wrong with reporting breaking news to keep the public informed but when they start throwing out unverified details that's where the problem lies.If the media isn't certain of the source or validity of their information it shouldn't be reported as fact only to have to retract it later.This is especially true if they say a certain large number of people were killed in an incident only to have to later say it was only one or two.When they do things like that they loose credibility in my view.Cheers
Mârk
Remember when they report on these details they're using
sources. One of those sources may be in the local ER
saying they've got a certain number of casualties.
The police and emergency personnel would prefer that wrong
preliminary inforamtion get reported instead of having their
emergency phone lines jammed with calls. The worst thing that
can happen with emergency personnel is to the public flooding
the phone liens of of the police to the point where the
phone lines become useless. That is one of the reasons where,
in an emergency, they will take the extraordinary step to
shut down the cell phone system.
Add to that you've got parents of kids in the local schools that
have been locked down and they're starting to panic. Same
with friends/relatives of people in the area. And they all
further tax the phone system by trying to reach their
kids/friends/relatives in the area. Another reason
why they want to keep the phones clear.
It is the very nature of breaking news that some information
will be wrong. It is critical to get inforamtion out to the
public but the public is also mindful tht it will take at
least 24-72 to really flesh out the details and track down
sources.
I still can't agree with the media " garbage in, garbage out" mentality just to make it look like they are doing their jobs.If they are unsure of the reliability of their sources then just don't report it. Heck why not let the media read the Internet blogs and report that as fact. Bottom line if the info is rock solid then report it but if its shaky then don't. Doing so just makes them look foolish and unprofessional.Cheers
Mârk
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Which is essentially what is happening now. Newspaper sales are way down, tv and radio listeners/viewers are way down, and staff is being cut big time. So alot of our news is driven by
bloggers and other internet entities. Alot of newspapers have shut down, greatly cut back on staff, etc. News rooms are cut to the bare bones, as advertising is down.
Alot of that is newspapers take too long to their content out,
cost too much and have lots of trouble getting the product to
the customer.
(Heck you have a major story break at 1 am. The Newspaper goes
to bed at 11pm, the paper hits the street at 7am. it would be
the next day before that big story that broke at 1 am is reported in the paper. Why pay $60 a month for an outdated paper when you can the latest up to date information on the internet for free. ) When it comes to news you get what
you pay for and today alot of folks won't pay anything.
So you have entities struggling to survive on paid subscriptions,
paywalls, and advertising. It was those paid journalists who
got the answers, did the investigations, and reported the stories. Today alot of them are unemployed. Many cities had two daily newspapers, now they may have one if they are lucky.
Maybe now that Jeff Beos has purchused the Washington Post
maybe he'll figure how reinvent the news paper and make it
viable again. Right now newspaper are dying, radio and tv
are dying, Young people today don't read newspaper, don't
watch Tv, don't listen to radio. They get their information
from the internet.
My wife tells me that CBS reported a conversation on FaceBook between my daughter and her boyfriend. So, a reminder that what you say online CAN end up on national news.
And it should be noted that what you say on the internet stays out
in Cyberspace forever and could come back to haunt you in later years.
Well, traditionally nobody used their real name. Now these 'social media' encourage people to do just that, so they can sell advertising data. There is some advantage to the users, mostly in being able to find people you know in RL, but there is also a downside.
In this case I assume they know this particular FB user is the son of a victim, or somehow figured that out, and there he is talking to his GF, who just happens to be my daughter, and is only sweet sixteen.
Note that I haven't posted my real name, although quite a few of you know it, but by not giving it in this thread I am protecting a whole load of people. If I were posting this on FB, well actually I wouldn't do that.