Facebook Is a Waste of Life - Twitter, too! More people are tweeting versus living!

I'm going to assume because you're on the internet that you know about both Twitter and Facebook. They are both unholy wastes of your time. They are both different in many ways, but equally destructive to your mental health and well-being. They tax what little mental capacity you have left in our noisy present with their constant, always-on, always-happening newsfeed NOW! They suck. Literally. They suck the mindspace that you hold so dear and continue to suck at it. Public display of things, and the displaying of them, has become an important part of all social interactions. (As if being in the moment wasn't good enough, now we also have to pose in the moment for the eternity on the internet.)

What do we get in return for all of this activity? We get to see other people's activity. We get to be inundated with advertisements. We get to lose time out of our day to see other people's activity.

Let me state this as clearly as I can: If you are not staying in touch with people off of Facebook, you actually aren't staying in touch with them. Tweeting with celebrities does not make you like a celebrity in any way, shape, or form.

Facebook helps college classmates stay in touch? So does a telephone. Also a telephone requires you to actually speak with each other in a meaningful fashion, directly, and about things that are mostly real. When's the last time you called someone, just to call them? Is it more or less since you joined facebook? If you fall out of touch with someone, it is because you and that person have both chosen to let it happen. Trying to artificially maintain contact with people through some social media site is a false way of maintaining your friendships.

Twitter is even worse. There isn't even a pretense that anyone is trying to be more than the largest chat-room in the world. It is an unfocused font of noise and wickedness that, though it did help people tear down some regimes in the Mid-East, is no longer capable of doing that after management caved to the demands of the dictatorships who insist upon shutting Twitter down, and the internet, with the flip of a switch to preserve their cruel power base. And, yes, you could possibly chat with famous people. As much as I love Kanye West's music, I have no desire to banter back and forth with him about sandwiches and sexy pictures. I'm actually quite happy not doing that. I'd prefer that he spent a little more time making music, frankly, and a little less tweeting at his fans. Personally, I'd prefer to spend my time interacting with people who are actually my friends, and less time tweeting with publicists who are pretending to be.

No. Here's the big difference I see between Facebook and Hubpages: Hubpages pays me for the privilege of hosting my content. Facebook provides a service, and that service is to the advertisers. Twitter is no different. They offer free services to us, because they generate revenue from us. Advertising isn't evil, but it is evil when my content is given away for free to generate advertising revenue. No self-respecting writer would do that at work. Why would we do it in our social time? Suddenly the rules we've made for ourselves change just because we aren't at "work" anymore?

Facebook and twitter monetize your eyeballs. That's their business model. Hubpages does it, too. The difference here is that Hubpages offers a kickback to me, directly. I can share my content on the web, and receive payment for that content.

Also, I encourage my family to blog, to share photos and stories and content with each other. But, we do it at our own websites, that are invisible to google search. If you don't get the link from us, you don't get to the site. Period.

One of the things I hate about Twitter and Facebook is the cyberstalking. There is something genuinely wrong about it, and it is difficult for people to have a truly private life when so much of their life is available for strangers and/or people who do not wish you well, to track your movements.

One author I know makes a point of mentioning who is going to be at her house with her dogs whenever she goes to a book signing. She doesn't even own dogs. She does this because she was posting publicly her tour schedule and book-signing schedule and someone used that information to know she was going to be out of the house, to rob the place. When information becomes too public, the risks become very high that your information will be used against you.

On hubpages, you don't know me. I share what I like, for instance, this brief rant about Facebook and Twitter, and I can link this to the people who do know me. And, instead of generating revenue for the richest person under 35 in the world, a billionaire, I kick a few pennies in my general direction.

Facebook and twitter suck. Hubpages is better.