a little story about some guys from the past (i.e. 2014)
These guys were like me: they were on Facebook. And they got into a discussion about the topic of Facebook, in a way I thought was unhelpful to the discussion, but was just my fault anyway.
![\"(\"/](\"/media/adce92fddf38a751e0edf3b0cd76c58834ba2f8c_2dee5d47b4e1.png\")
This is a picture of me and the original poster \u2013 I\u2019m a little dude with a blue t-shirt with a big flower in it, and the original poster was some guy with white-and-gray hair.
We were posting in the \u201cNewest Stuff\u201d section. New Stuff is where the Facebook algorithm shows you what your friends have recently posted; it\u2019s full of posts about the latest news.
So the original poster posted something like \u201cI have no idea why I\u2019m doing this. Facebook does not help me stay organized.\u201d And then a bunch of people reblogged it with \u201cFacebook does help me stay organized!\u201d
The rest of the Facebook group was having this discussion with the guy on the left of this picture, who responded with \u201cIt\u2019s true! Facebook is helping me stay organized!\u201d
![\"(\"/](\"/media/be4e92afc96098252a0f97f4ee478ec9bd4cc46e_e5065c3d61f7.png\")
He also posts a lot of pictures of cute animals. He has a pet wolf that he spends a lot of time looking at.
My friend was responding with \u201cThat\u2019s what I meant by \u2018organized\u2019. The reason I use Facebook is to stay organized.\u201d
And then the rest of us were kind of annoyed by this whole exchange. I think my friend also ended up taking the screenshot of me to prove a point about something else.
So I wanted to bring this back to the fore. Because it was interesting to me as a reflection of how we felt about Facebook.
(It\u2019s also interesting because people talk about the algorithm all the time these days, but I don\u2019t see too much stuff about it outside of Facebook. If this were, say, 2011, people would\u2019ve been using Facebook to complain about how their friends and family are always posting \u201crelevant\u201d content; they\u2019d have been talking about how there are no pictures of cute animals that are \u201crelevant\u201d to their lives, except for some very few pictures of some cute animals. But I don\u2019t think that was much of an issue then; I haven\u2019t noticed it now. Now, my friends and family aren\u2019t any more likely to post pictures of cute animals than they were in 2011. Facebook doesn\u2019t help them to stay organized, and the Facebook algorithm doesn\u2019t help me to stay organized, either. The main changes have been elsewhere.)