a flipbook for Film260 I've never been a Facebook user and I take a lot of good-natured abuse from my friends about it. I feel alternately smug and left out, but I'm too paranoid, too private, and ultimately, too easily frustrated by trivial social drama to get sucked in to it at this late date. So it seemed like the logical talking point for my second Digital Media Studies assignment.

1. To be or not to be...
On Facebook
Image by _Max-B [flickr]
a flipbook for Film260
by Laura MacDonald

2. “An estimated 93% of millennials use Facebook.”
Image by garryknight [flickr]
Josh Sanburn - “I’m Not On Facebook and I Don’t Regret It - Yet”

3. TextTextText
and yet “Facebook is not the Internet. It's just one website...
...and it comes with a price.”
Image by DavidErickson [flickr]
Douglas Rushkoff - “Why I’m Quitting Facebook”

4. “The true
end users
of
Facebook
are the
marketers
who want
to reach
and
influence
us.
They are
Facebook's
paying
customers;
we are the
product...
Image by George Rex [flickr]

5. ...and we are its workers.”
Douglas Rushkoff - “Why I’m Quitting Facebook”
Image by Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen [flickr]

6. “Corporations used to have
to do research to assemble
our consumer profiles...
...now we do it for them.”
Douglas Rushkoff - “Why I’m Quitting Facebook”
Image by worldoflard [flickr]

7. We know this, yet every time Facebook offers us new
functionality, we dive back in.
Image by author

8. “[With
Timeline]
it’s
increasingly
about
individuals
connecting
with
themselves
ratherthan
their
friends...
It’s now a
thoughtful
chronicle
of one’s
life that
just
happens to
be public.”
Josh Sanburn - “I’m Not
On Facebook and I
Don’t Regret It - Yet”
Image by author

9. And now there’s the Graph Search
tool, allowing ‘friends’ to easily
search through every piece of
information you’ve ever shared.
Image by author

10. “The more accessible our Facebook information becomes...
...the less obscurity protects our interests.”
Image by Runs With Scissors [flickr]
Woodrow Hartzog & Evan Selinger - “Obscurity: A Better Way to Think About Your Data Than 'Privacy”

11. And
obscurity
can be a
good thing.
“Obscurity is a protective state
that can further a number of
goals, such as autonomy, self-
fulfillment, socialization, and
relative freedom from the
abuse of power.”
Woodrow Hartzog & Evan Selinger - “Obscurity:
A Better Way to Think About Your Data Than
'Privacy”
Image by Jasmic [flickr]

12. So why not avoid Facebook altogether?
Image by time stands still [flickr]

13. After all, “It can be
hard enough just
getting through
each day...
much less
extensively
documenting
it all.”
Josh Sanburn - “I’m Not On Facebook and I
Don’t Regret It - Yet”
Image by lets.book [flickr]

14. But what happens when you start
missing birthdays, parties, events
because you’re no longer part of
the conversation?
Image by Kevin McShane [flickr]

15. “I feel like a generational outlier
simply because I don’t
participate in the one thing I
believe defines my generation:
Facebook.”
Josh Sanburn - “I’m Not On Facebook and I Don’t Regret It - Yet”
Image by yiannisPhotos [flickr]

16. And abstaining from
Facebook is
increasingly seen as
nearly as creepy as
Facebook itself.
Image by Elle Is Oneirataxic [flickr]

17. “The person with no
Facebook presence
now finds him or
herself in much the
same position as, going
back a bit, a sweaty
person who, having
lowered his voice in
the pharmacy,
requested both
chloroform and
quicklime.”
Catherine Bennet - “Not On Facebook? What Kind of Sad Sicko Are You?”
Image by Bohman [flickr]

18. “Young people in
particular need to
anticipate the reaction of
a future employer who
discovers, with incredulity
that gives way only to
suspicion and distrust,
that an otherwise
impressive candidate has
recorded nothing online
regarding their
accumulation of friends,
social life or holidays in
fun destinations.”
Catherine Bennet - “Not On Facebook? What Kind of Sad Sicko Are You?”
Image by S.S.K. [flickr]

19. “The warnings of Facebook sceptics are drowned by internet pundits
proclaiming the backward-looking futility of resistance.”
Catherine Bennet - “Not On Facebook? What Kind of Sad Sicko Are You?”
Image by Dunechaser [flickr]

20. Maintaining a Facebook page will
always be a tightrope walk between
revealing too much and showing too
little...
Image by Nicolò Paternoster [flickr]

21. And we have to be conscious -
verging on paranoid, possibly -
tracks
we leave.
of the
Image by Vu Bui [flickr]