Facebook friends!

I only have a very few 'Facebook friends'. I ignore most requests to be friends and have only ever had to unfriend someone - not because I didn't like her but because she tweeted absolutely every move she made and for some reason it all appeared on Facebook - her life filled pages and I couldn't sort the wood from the trees.

It is great to be able to see what DC and DGC are up to, especially since two DC are overseas and lead quite exciting lives! And I belong to a couple of closed or private groups from school and work which keep me up-to-date.
There is no need to accept a 'friend' request if you don't want to.

Have a lovely time Harrigran. Something very special about 90th birthday parties!

I am off to a 90th birthday party tonight and I am going to meet two of my facebook friends who have travelled from America for the celebration. I thought I was going to surprise them but one of them has just asked if I was attending the party

I love Facebook for the funny videos and quizzes people post and for keeping in touch but I don't put much personal stuff up. You can be 'friends' with people without following them and getting overwhelmed.

I love FB, but, like most of you, keep my privacy settings very tight, and don't accept friends whom I don't want. It is very simple.

With scattered friends after a very mobile early married life, and DC and DGC (the older ones) on FB, I love the feeling of being on touch.

You can form a closed or secret group on FB can't you? I think there's a GN group (maybe more than one!) but don't know its status.

anniezzz09 You can set your privacy so that no one can see your photos or your other friends, then no one can poke about!

My teenage pen friend in the USA found an old letter from me and her DiL found me for her on FB. We now email each other regularly and have found that we have a great deal in common after sixty years. We are also FB friends, but don't need to use that facility very often. When we were teenagers, our airmails took at least a week to arrive; now emails are instantaneous. 60 years ago that would have been in the realm of sci fi.

I do, I look for the little green dot that shows that my DCs are still alive. I can see when they were last on, and then I know that all is right with the world. It's DS's 2nd year at uni and until he leaves and grows up a bit and stops posting things like '3am kebab is the best kebab' when I know he has lectures at 9am, then I shall probably continue to use it to keep an eye on him. I'll grow out of it eventually.

I recently joined fb to find a person I used to be very friendly with. I haven't seen her for over forty years but I have thought about her a lot over the years so I googled her name and found a lady who looked so much like her that I didn't think it could be anyone else. I sent a message to her through her fb page, to try and find out if it was, in fact, her, to which she did not reply, but friended me. I sent her another message and again received no reply, so I have given up. We are now facebook friends but I still don't know whether it is actually her. All sounds a bit lame doesn't it? Having been a means to an end that didn't work out, I don't look at facebook these days.

A fluffy kitchen would be awfully difficult a to keep clean!!

Must admit I love FB though only have a manageable number of friends and don`t accept FRs if I don`t want to.

I just thought you had all bases covered!

ninathenana don't be so quick to think badly - the poor woman probably likes you and wanted to stay in touch. When I left Ex I would have loved to stay in touch with his sisters through fb, and they with me, but they felt they couldn't be openly friends for fear of being thought of as disloyal. So we have to have secret emails instead with photo attachments.

Even if you mute people, its the very public nature of FB that is beginning to give me the creeps. I really don't want the woman who sent me a Friend request poking about in my photos etc or going on to look at my children' s pages, etc. And I have people who post embarrassing things or just too many fluffy kitchens, etc. At least one such has umpteen eager people liking everything but she notices if I don't!!! So I suppose reading all the comments is clarifying things for me and I'm thinking at the moment that I'm going to delete my page and the kids will have to cope!
P.s that should be fluffy kittens but my phone won't let me change it! Oh well, fluffy kitchen is certainly good for a laugh

faye that was very thoughtless of your niece, wasn't it.
Your poor son

I love FB - ignore requests from people I dont know that well, or accept and mute them

I store all my photos there as a double back up , and use FB messenger as much as text, I also use whatsapp a lot

I think it is fab, especially for keeping in touch with all the children, their partners etc

That's probably exactly what she was thinking Nina!

Only yesterday I had a friends request from DD's new partners ex MiL why ??
Although I was tempted, just for a moment. So I could spy

One of my good friends on fb used to have a catering business, and she has loads of GBBO friends, professional and amateur bakers/cooks/cakemakers etc.
Every day it's food, food, food! No wonder I'm getting fatter!

I had a friend request and it flicked off to cyber space when I opened it, I will never know who it was.

When my mother died very late at night my niece put the news immediately on FB. DD1's friend who is on all of our FB wrote commiserations and tagged our names. It then alerted my son by his mobile that there was a post with his name and that is how he found out. I had kept him informed of what was happening and was going to phone him in the morning. He was annoyed that someone would tag his name late at night about his GM dying and deleted himself from FB.

I'm much the same as the rest of you.... good for keeping in touch with family and nice to have 'instant' photos from mobiles when the GC are having a fun day out.... especially when you live a long way away from each other. On the other hand like janerowena I do get fed-up with friends posting selfies in night clubs or on holiday...even worse when, like one 'friend' ' posting photos of every drink, from the departure lounge to the last raucous night in the hotel complex! And another friend who posts sickly sentimental verses, usually about the joy of grandchildren. Yeh I know I'm a grumpy old cynic

That's ok, they can all move over there and we can carry on using it to keep in touch with family and friends.

I do have a couple of friends whose posts have surprised me, showing sides to them that I hadn't known existed. One is divorced and no longer young and goes clubbing at every opportunity - not in a bad way but I hide her posts because there are only so many selfies of her in a crowded club I can stand. The other is obsessed by dogs and has over 1000 'friends' and likes all of their posts, I can only cope with one beaten/starved/trained to fight/stolen/rescue dog a week, let alone every five minutes.

My Sil complains that I know more about her daughter's life than she does. I find out on FB and tell her because she doesn't do FB. She complains that her DD doesn't contact her. My children and I hardly ever phone each other but we email, fb, wattsapp etc so don't need the regular once a week phone calls.

So it seems we agree that FB is fine as long as we make it work for us and don't become "slaves " to it. Anyway isn't it old hat with the cool young things who all use Instagram instead?

I use FB all the time to keep in touch with family some of whom are abroad , it keeps me up to date with all their goings on and allows me into the life of a new grandson as his Dad sends little video's and pics of him to me via messenger all the time, without it I would hardly know the little chap..
I only add people I want to befriend and ignore those I don't if they don't like it , tough!!