Actually, both of those invite-only message boards were set up purposefully to hold sensitive information and gossip (and foster a greater sense of viral "family" within their memberships) away from prying eyes and the idly curious. In each of these cases, the accent was primarily in controlling the membership to weed out assorted trolls and engage in frank, adult (though not in the XXX meaning of the word) conversations. Logging on to these MBs is just a few keystrokes away; it's certainly no more involved than signing on to LPSG.
As they were both founded by completely non-famous "nobodies" (except within the very narrow confines of the slightly-larger communities where we'd all found each other in the first place), there's nothing "prima donna" in their having been set up. As the Lou Sarah sockpuppet was set up as a place where family and close friends could interact off the radar screen of the general public (and, with millions of people world-wide who find Mrs Palin compelling, whether in a positive or negative way, that part makes a kind of sense), all I meant is that there truly are much more discrete and genuinely private means at her disposal.
The fact that she chose FB,
Stop right there. Nobody "chooses" Facebook any more. Everyone uses it. Sure, you can refuse to use it, but that just means that you'll lose touch with a lot of people, and most people would rather not.
I think you misunderstood what I meant. I meant that requesting that the people you wish stay in touch with use another system in conjunction with Facebook at the same time would be so prima donna. It would be an outrageous request to expect your own friends and family to stop using Facebook because you're famous, since they will also want to keep up with people
other than you on Facebook, so the scenario that you're proposing is that people who want to keep you in the loop need to say everything they're saying on Facebook on a totally separate system, too, just for you. So, one cousin uploads a cute picture of her youngest daughter and puts a cute caption under it, then she has to upload the same photo on another system and put the cute caption under it, just for me. Then my family sees it on Facebook or this other system. Are they expected to make the same comments on both? That's the only way I can converse with them and they can interact with the other people on Facebook, too. It's ridiculous. And that's what I'm talking about is a prima donna request. And that's completely unnecessary and creates too much extra work for all your friends and family, not to mention it's just impractical when it comes down to using it on a daily basis, considering how many people like to upload photos and status updates from their phones, when a person can just use a pseudonym on Facebook instead, thus putting the onus on you to stay in touch with them instead of expecting them to go out of their way to say everything they say on Facebook on another system, too,
just for you. Even the most well-meaning friends and family wouldn't go to that much trouble, and a person would be truly narcissistic if she thought that they would.
where she's already so closely followed (and with which she is absolutely so closely identified) tells me that she either doesn't know of other options available to her or, perhaps, that she expected that this "revelation" would eventually make the light of day, which would make her both more reviled by those who dislike her and adored by those who do ("Give the poor woman a break! She just wants so privacy!). It's only doubts as to her ability to strategize coherently that makes me doubt the second idea, frankly.
Okay, wait, I think I'm seeing our disconnect. I think you're assuming she's using it so other people can see her status updates. Oh no, people join Facebook so they can see other people's status updates, because no one is going to update both Facebook and another system every single time. If I wanted to tall all my friends something, I could just use email, but if I want to know what's going on in the people's lives that i care about, I have to be on Facebook to stay in touch. That's just the way it is. Expecting people to update two systems in order to communicate the same things twice, and one of them just for me? That's absurd and asking for too much when there's a simpler and more logical solution: pseudonym.
Her failure to properly use the privacy guards available (as faulty as they are) and to make her profile and wall invisible are evidence of her failure to strategize and her ignorance and further evidence of how unfit she is to lead, but the usage of Facebook under a pseudonym is not, IMO. I am absolutely positive she's just doing the exact same thing as any other famous person.
And believe me, I'm pretty darned shocked that I'm defending anything Palin has ever done. I dislike the woman, but I'm not inherently unfair. I consider the things I dislike her for to be fair judgments and I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon criticizing her for something I don't agree with.
Though I really only check in on my FB profile about 2-3 times per month, I am not slamming the entire concept per se.
Oh, I think perhaps you don't understand how some other people use it then. Because of Facebook, I'm a lot more involved in the lives of my family members. I'm the last one to join (sorry, just remembered an aunt and an uncle joined in the past two weeks! I'm not the last one!), and I regret not joining it earlier. It's brought me so much closer to so many people because now I know what's going on in their daily lives. I honestly don't think I could stay in touch as well if I wasn't on Facebook. If every single person sent me an email instead of making a status update, I'd be pissed off every day that my mailbox was too full and it would prevent discussion among the other people viewing that update. Those little daily interactions are important.
Though I last saw them face-to-face 19 years ago, when they were still kids, I have a good, active rapport with several of my dead French lover's nieces and nephews, and treasure the ability to have reconnected. And I know that just the fact that they really do now feel as though they've un oncle américain gives a whole new meaning and texture to their lives (though IMing in French is a chore). It also reassures their parents that UB is still alive and kicking, with pix to prove it, as none of them were happy to see me leave in 1992.
Speaking of pix, my second favorite thing about FB is that fact that, due to my many camera-happy friends and associates (through my work at the bar and other social interactions about town), I am tagged in literally hundreds of photos posted there. I have entire folder the My Pictures section of my computer culled directly from FB, and have used more than one as an avatar here and elsewhere.
I have no gripes with FB in an existential way: like most tools, its pluses and negatives are all in how it is used/abused by its users.
Oh, I have gripes. So many gripes, but I'm not ready to abandon staying in touch with friends and family because I'm mad at Facebook.
I purposefully choose to limit my participation there, as the spamminess of some chick I barely know in HS's multiple status updates is a minor irritant, and the endless "friend" requests from complete strangers makes me just a bit disconcerted as to who these people really are; I have amassed more than my fair share of stalkers over the years.
And THIS is the reason why I have more than one account, so that I can communicate with the people I actually want to communicate with, not every single person who remembers my name from the time I was 15.