For me, commenting on the sex angle in the article misses the point. The author was kind enough to put the relevant text in bold, specifically 'cheapens the experience of something very important'.
I'd argue that this is already happening with something very important, our human friendships. Facebook and sites of its ilk encourage us to build shallow relationships with many and fool ourselves into thinking we're sharing something of merit.
I believe in personal responsibility, so I'm not saying Facebook, Twitter, etc... are forced upon people, we can choose to leave them alone if we see fit and plenty of people do just that. It's our job to fit technology around our own wants and needs, not be led by technology.
Anyway, interesting article, thank you to the author.
Facebook tries to monetize the difficulty of letting relationships go. I realize this, so I don't accept friend requests from former friends/acquaintances. You're only my friend on Facebook if we're actually friends. I have 15 Facebook friends, and I care about all of them.
As someone with hundreds of 'friends', I'm curious about how you use the site differently than me. How often do you log in? Do you participate every time you log in? Do you have a group chat with all your friends?
And how weird is it to have all the activity from your friends' posts elsewhere (comments/likes on public posts) in your news feed? It would seem like if your friends did it as much as my friends do, you'd see more strangers on facebook than friends.
I get on a few times a day for a few minutes at a time, but I'll stay on for 20-30 minutes if I'm having a good chat with someone. I've found that most of my friends prefer to text.
If I don't see anything new in my feed, I don't stick around.
I'd argue that this is already happening with something very important, our human friendships. Facebook and sites of its ilk encourage us to build shallow relationships with many and fool ourselves into thinking we're sharing something of merit.
I believe in personal responsibility, so I'm not saying Facebook, Twitter, etc... are forced upon people, we can choose to leave them alone if we see fit and plenty of people do just that. It's our job to fit technology around our own wants and needs, not be led by technology.
Anyway, interesting article, thank you to the author.