the social media blight

I hope to be wrong but i have the feeling that this forum,like many nowadays,is stuggling just a bit.
Some people  appear to claim that this is because of the apparent hegemony of the so called social media sites.
Speaking from a personal standpoint i do not think they are at all the "same" and dislike particularly facebook.(even though i'm on it!)
firstly the way they are always spying and trying to control everything.Lets face it once you've "rediscovered" some old friends and acquaintances with whom you'd lost contact the rest of the time seems to be
1. an endless procession of people's pets especially cats and dogs
2. some trivial banter (sometimes reminiscent of those old british seaside post cards kiss me quick and all that)
3. people posting lapidary statements (often from famous people..oscar wilde,stalin,steve jobs) to which usually there's little to say or add (just enough to make one feel an inferior being)
4. what people are eating (it's not enough to enjoy your restaurant meal you feel the need to immediately put a picture of your food on facebook)
5. the extraordinary number of holidays some people seem to enjoy ..rigorously in exotic places.
And...thats about it.It's rare to find any constructive discussion,interesting subjects (apart from articles/graphs/pictures/stories fished out of the corners of the net.which are there anyway and without facebook.
6. astounding levels of "conformity" everybody seems to "like"everything and if you don't you'll soon be treated like a pariah..oh yes and don't dare to be non p.c...with that the gods of facebook will be upon you!
So...i don't really understand why forums like this one should "suffer" given that the whole point of these places is at least a common denominator (in this case italy) from where,yes,one can still have cats/banter or quotes but one can or could also have discussion even arguements on subjects which are in common with the other subscribers.
forgive the rant but i find the "ole social media" actually very tedious.i also don't believe in it as the " new frontier of marketing" if i want to by or reserch something to buy i certainly don't consider facebook.I don't really use it for my own business although we do have an annoying client who insists on sending her requests to stay rather than by e-mail but by facebook messaging which one may not even find if you're not spending all your time in there..just a thought.

Admin.............please keep this post from sebastiano highlighted somehow ?

I totally agree with everything in your post sebastiano with the exception of the comment  re this forum struggling. If there is nothing to say, there is nothing to say !

Now social media...............I cannot for the life of me understand the way so many people have been corralled into using these 'products'. Why would I want to know that someone is going to the hairdressers, having a sandwich, on the bus etc etc !

If someone wants to let me know what they are up to, they can phone and speak, or text, or email, or pop around !

A hot potato of mine !

V

Well said Sebastiano - Down here in Sicily we have appalling wifi, so its a uge shock for me when I go back to the UK to see just how inescapably conjoined people are with their phones and tablets.   I was on twitter but it made me too angry, I now only use it to lambast poor service and incompetence by big companies and it works in that respect - your problems are suddenly sorted.  I use Fb for work, and for a very close circle of friends, but loathe, as Sebastiano says, endless cute pics with generic tag lines about the state of world.  Its an electronic version of the 'You dont have to be mad to work here, but it helps' sticker on the typicsts cubicle.   The sooner it all dies a natural death the better.

Few more people like yourself Sebastiano and this forum will be fine.... I also dislike all social media and have pet names for the 2 most well known. However, I would guess the same was said about the telephone when it first arrived. Don't get me wrong I think probably many of the worries about it and the current "new world" are true and detrimental to our well being. I'm a bit ambivalent about it all, but also have a big worry about their total lack of security and potential for misuse.
Unfortunately I too think this medium has an impact on forums, but perhaps not to a great extent. I've said this before that the difficulty of getting information from forums is their greatest drawback, especially accurate and up to date information. But I'm also of the opinion that there is still, at this moment in time, a need/use for such mediums and will be for a few years yet (for us old fuddie-duddies). I know some on here think the numbers of members matter, but I' coming to the conclusion it's very much more the quality and diverse nature of the people that matters... Please do keep those posts coming!

I agree with most of what has been said; however, as pointed out by Vicino, I do not think that this young forum is struggling. Taking into account the huge choices available nowadays, I do think that we are doing quite well.
Quite happy to see that I am not the only one bored to death by social media. I must clarify that I was quite happy to find a few lost friends through it; however, I must confess that some of them are not as nice, witty and interesting as I remembered, but then, perhaps they feel the same about myself. Also, I am not to keen about reporting "urbi et orbi" which are my feelings, thoughts, etc. all the time.
Blogs can also be interesting or boring, according to their contents, just as it is the case with forums. But the advantage of the forum format is that it fosters interaction and this is something I do enjoy.

I (mis)spent a lot of time during university in the common room engaging in chit chat and banter (passing for us as sparkling wit). It was not very productive but it was good fun. I see facebook as being an equivalent sort of activity. Fun, but not to be taken terribly seriously either for the good or the bad. I certainly don't post anything that I don't want spied on. I don't follow twitter because I can't be faffed but that one seems to be particularly good for people marketing themselves to gain reputation, which I guess is useful if you're in the right sort of field. I use forums for the information that they can give you.

All of them can foster interaction but it depends what your intention is. In the old days I suppose people used to hang over garden fences, or spend time (and money) in the pub.

but the " sparkling wit" was great wasn't it and the people actually there!
our 15 year old neice (coming on 24) came to stay at our place for a month and a half this year.Her mother,my SIL, gave her a talk telling her that the zii ( thats us) were very busy and had a lot of work to do and that she should help with the various tasks etc..in fact most of the time she spent draped nearlynaked on a couch gazing into her smartphone as it didn't seem too appropriate that i speak to her my wife did ( in a nice way) and was promptly accused of attempting to limit her social comunication...so it just carried on until one day she appeared at breakfast asking what "pussy" meant..my wife went beserk (as she knew what it meant) turned out to be a 35 year old perv in Australia.............
not quite sure what the moral of the story is but one can say that times have changed a bit...no?

Totally agree with the above about the social media.  Even though I am on facebook solely to communicate to family in far off places who do not seem to have  heard of emails etc.  The crap that appears on my pages is frightening, big brother seems to know exactly what internet pages I have been on in the last five minutes.  I used to like the old forum but it changed so much, even so I persevered until I found you all on this site. I do not think you are floundering but blossoming.  I am guiding people to this site daily praising the friendliness of everyone and the fact that I have got so much more information from you all in a few weeks than I have got over the years on other sites.  Long may we reign!

Without wanting to be provocative, can I say that social media can be very useful if managed correctly. Like many others, I use Facebook to keep by with friends and family, who are scattered around the world, but I also use it to keep up to date with my little corner of Italy. Italians are really into Facebook and there is lot of extremely useful information around. The trick is understanding and using the settings and lists. 

So, a quick glance at Facebook this morning told me what roads and bridges were closed as a result of the extreme wet weather conditions in our area. I also saw before and after pictures of the the first giant bonfire/falo of the year and read about the rules for this competition that relate to weather and what happens in extreme weather conditions. Also several opinions on the quality of the bonfire.  Oh, and I had an extremely useful reply from an unknown person on a query I posted on a page I follow (a page is often open to everyone to see) about a World War I cemetery in Northern Italy.

Twitter can be useful for breaking news, but again, you need to understand how it works to get the best out of it.

I'd say there is a place for all types of social media. You just use them differently for different things. But most of all, take the time to understand how they work and use the settings. And before anyone dismisses social media as being only for young people, can I point out that I am a pensioner (although I'm not too sure how that happened!) 

I agree with all of you   In other words, a lot of FB is stupid but it also gives me the opportunity to keep up to date with my part of Italy when I am not there.
I have yet to come across a social media site that is good for proper discussion - for that you need to be face to face over a table and a bottle of wine.....