Comments on: Ick, old married guys on Facebook

Maybe the older crowd has good reasons for using social-networking sites, but CNET News.com intern Sabena Suri can't quite imagine what they'd be.

[C.Schroeder]

Facebook Grows Up

While I can appreciate your point of view, Sabena, and you raise some valid points regarding abuses of social networking, you should be aware that the creator of Facebook *wants* older users to join the party.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227872/site/newsweek/

[Maccess]

Schroeder's right. Hate to tell you this.

...but social networking sites would rather have older people.

For example, how many people your age are going to walk into a Lexus showroom and drive out in a new Lexus?

...and who is more likely to respond to a Facebook ad and buy a new computer?

Younger users are tolerated because one day they'll grow up too.

[squidburns]

CNET has too much web 2.0 on the brain

wow social networking sites are all the rage and everyone that uses a computer is a teenage facebook IM texter blog queen.

I am not sure how much 'stock' the powers at be have in this 'web 2.0 iphone volkswagen living in the Bay Area want to be hip trendy cool' illusion of society but sadly there are fewer interesting and informative articles to choose from due to its constant regurgitation on this site.

some readers out there (whomever they are) used to play chit chat on the 'puter but that was 20 years ago and now we have jobs and we have real money.

some would like to see much less snuggling up to social-networking sites and the adolescent opinions of a socially disconnected sheltered newbie intern and see some news. this is news.cnet.com yes?

I was a teenager once... and no one wanted to hear what I had to say. Generations before me referred to the young as 'stupid kids' and why should we start to care now? The young are morons like we all were 'way back when'. Just do video a search of 'butt rocket' and I rest my case.

Ick, old married guys on facebook...
like OMG... welcome to the internet...

_mike

p.s. and since I am old fart I do not have to use punctuation or avoid run-on sentences on the interweb because truthfully I know no one really cares :) it's the internet for Pete's sake how can anyone take it seriously?

[GeoNorth]

Spoken like a true teen...

[i]p.s. and since I am old fart I do not have to use punctuation or avoid run-on sentences on the interweb because truthfully I know no one really cares :) it's the internet for Pete's sake how can anyone take it seriously?[/i]

I bet you were in the gifted class and teacher said you did so well too :P

[bdaughtry]

Young Lady

Your parents have every right to "spy" on you in order to keep you safe. In fact, it is their responsibility to do so. There are a lot of "creepy" people in the world, and age has nothing to do with it.

[Claire Gaeta]

Bravo!

Well phrased!

[Hardrada]

Ridiculous article...

...waste of bits.

[cw_rm]

Spoiled princesses on Facebook

Thanks to Facebook, I can tell that you attend a private school in
Silicon Valley where the tuition is nearly $30K/year. Thanks to
your connections, you are already padding your resume with
opportunities only the tiniest sliver of society will ever have
access to, deserving or otherwise. And this is what you choose
to write about? Obviously you will never have to worry about
finding a cushy job so I wouldn't worry about the fact that you
populated a site visited by millions of people a day with the
same kind of spoiled-princess whining that appears on 75
percent of the world's Blogspot sites. Next week you'll probably
be writing for Slate, if your parents know anybody there. Save it
for the Wall.

[acheron5]

Naive Teenage Girls Writing Articles on CNet.... Surprising? So Lame

This piece was truly revolting. I'm always one to be sensitive of being
too critical of immature and clearly clueless girls, particularly in public
forums, but since she has chosen to put out such rubbish in a public
venue in such an insulting way and CNet has chosen to condone it a
response is in order.

Contrary to the preposterous misconceptions of the author, and by
extension the current editors at CNet, the internet was not invented to
become the playground or domain of little children, much less
opinionated and inexperienced teenage girls who are trying far too hard
in a very creepy way to be "cool" and to carve out a space online where
they can be considered to be so.

In fact, one of the most appealing characteristics of the internet has
long been the democratization of ideas. On the internet it's not
supposed to matter what the person on the other end of the switcher
happens to look like, what religion they practice, what their ethnic
heritage is, or how old they are. It's their ideas that matter. To suggest
that people older than this girls comfort zone using the internet is
somehow socially inappropriate is absurd. It is equally absurd that they
should need the consent of teenagers based on the rationales stated to
use whatever services they choose for whatever reasons they choose.

What is lame are children who have clearly failed to fit into the real world
social structures going online to futilely attempt to commandeer it for
themselves. It isn't that this is done with no respect but rather with
utter disrespect, as is evidenced by the tone and comments made in this
article.

That's not to say that young girls shouldn't be weary of guys on the
internet, or of countless other annoyances and dangers. However, this
girl is criminally naive if she believes that the intentions of an older man
are any less honorable than those of a teenage boy. Are teenage boys
on Facebook or MySpace also creepy? Of course not. For all practical
reasons it shouldn't matter. If you want to use these services safely only
add people you know. And as a matter of common sense age would be
the least worrisome characteristic of someone with a status of "Duuude.
Soo wasted rite now."

Were the actions of this one guy creepy? Probably. But it doesn't follow
by any form of logic, as is insinuated in the article, that all adults who
use these services for reasons of their own choosing are creepy simply
because some older men are.

And in any case, no one regardless of their age needs to have a
legitimate reason for using the internet, particularly as viewed by the
naive criteria of a lonely young girl. What legitimate use could a 17 year
old have for using Facebook or MySpace? None that I would approve of
but that shouldn't matter to them. Clearly it's not being used as an
educational tool. And it's not being used to keep kids out of trouble
either. It seems that the only reason kids use these services is for their
own enjoyment, and given the cost to society where kids get themselves
in trouble the price is just simply too high. Moreover, it is arguably the
case that the internet would be a far better place were it not for the
presence of children, particularly ones who just don't get the internet
like this one. For these reasons children should first justify their own
presence on the internet before judging anyone else's, perhaps a little
too much to ask of someone who has the sole quality of being
judgmental without the standing to be so.

The only thing that is certain is that this article certainly was creepy.
And it's been a long time, far longer than the author has been alive,
since I've been creeped out by an immature girl. I'm glad I was never
that young.

[tim7891]

so what?

So what if she does attend a private school and get "opportunities only a hadful will." I consider myself a pretty privlidged person also but I'm not going to appologize for it. She makes some very interesting points article and I think that it's good that Cnet is giving this opportunity to young people.

[MiaStrong]

Totally agree

Nice to see CNET including the younger voices.

[tim7891]

old

I don't think her problem was so much old people being on facebook. I think she was saying that's it's creepy for old people to interact with young people they don't know on social networking sites. I feel the same way. Likewise, when I'm 50, I'm not going to want random "kids" friending me either.

[Renegade Knight]

Icky Poo Yuck Yuck

Old Married Guys are fine. It's the pervs you need to be wary of. Those types get their start as kids. Maybe even that guy who you were hoping was making the friends request instead of the old married guy.

Your instincts are right. I'm not sure how it led to this article though.

I'm not on Face Book or MySpace my friends are. Truth be told, I don't have a lot of use for kids who are still working on being able to tell Shinola from it's counterpart. Besides I'm too busy raising my own and warning them to not add pervs to their friends list.

[freehuguenot]

It's how she says it...

As an "older male" I do not feel it is appropriate to ask a soon to be high
school senior to add me to her "friends" list. However, what I do find
troubling is the statements she makes to try and get her point across.
Should I characterize every person under 21 as not having a clue? I
don't think so. I guess I shouldn't be too hard on this young lady, she
certainly makes it very clear in her opening statement what her
priorities are!
P.S. In the future I hope CNET can find a young person more responsible
and deserving to be selected as a summer intern.

[kathy_torez]

Free dating sites = being mercilessly scammed

We run a dating site which I wont mention its name here so that people wont say this message
is to advertise it. And we have been running it for about 10 years. About 3 years ago we switched to a free Advertising model whereby anyone could join and talk with others for free, in NO time the site was filling up with people with IPs from Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Khazakstan, etc.
who were really nice looking (Blonds, Brunette, Red Hairs, etc.) and all sounded very nice but
were all actually scammers, joining to engage in one form of fraud after another.
In fact in about 1 year with went from about 1Mill members to about 3Mill, but of that easily 1 Mill
was fake members from Nigeria, Ghana, etc.

Just showing the incredible amount of fake memberships, and resulting scams, when a dating
site, a social networking site, is totally free to join. On that note, I would estimate that there are 10s of Millions of fake members from Nigeria, Ghana, etc. on Myspace & Facebook. And this point
could easily be demonstrated if Myspace & Facebook would do a IP look up on each member and display the country Flag of the members IP next to where they say they are from.

So we switched back to requiring full membership after you had subscribed via credit card payment and the number of fraud members signups from Nigeria, Ghana, etc. is down to about 5% of the sign-ups and each of those cases it is only matter of minutes or hours that their credit card information shows them to be a fraudsters and their account is closed.

In case you have not gotten the point of this story: be ready to be mercilessly scammed if
you join & meet some one on one of the free dating/social networking sites.

[Curmudge]

The Conceit of Youth

This article neatly exposes the conceit of youth. Only THEY have
lives (online). Only THEY deserve attention (from cute peers).
Only THEY should determine what is best for them or not. Ah,
those teen years when they're absolutely positive they know
everything completely. (and are never wrong)

Sure, she should be suspicious of an older man making contact,
but read the bulk of the article and you'll see that she's really
just creeped out that old people are populating HER private little
world. How dare we? Couldn't we just drift away into obscurity
on some ice floe and save all the young and beautiful people the
bother of having to deal with them?

My teen kids have the exact same conceit. They don't see
themselves as new-comers merging into traffic in an already
existing world. They see themselves AS the world. How dare we
be on the road and in their way.

If Facebook = (her) life, it's time to get a real one.

[Taskiss]

The Conceit of Youth

"How dare we be on the road and in their way."

Too bad they don't stop to think about who built the road and pays for the upkeep...heck, who pays for the car they drive, even!

Conceit, indeed.

[eGenerations]

Experience Never Gets Old...

Judging from the current state of pop culture, and ever present "Paris Hilton News", this story is indicative of youth today.

Youthful age has become the very real star on our bellies, like that of Dr. Suess' Star Belly Sneetches, and like the story, we now have people pumping themselves through "youth machines" to get and maintain their stared belly.

So what of experience? Once this oh so fabulous stared belly no longer remains, what is to become of ourselves? If our focus is retarded from a closed perception of the experienced, who then will guide us? Hmm.

Well eGenerations.com I founded for those who actually paid for this wonderous time waster we call the internet. As a Generation X'r 33 years of age, if I had someone tell me I was creepy for being on a particular site, I might have to send them an action on the opposite side of hug. However, I can understand this "Facebook Princess'" perspective. What if someone showed up at your dormroom in this age bracket? I too might find that creepy - unless it was security, then it would be a badge of honor.

Nathaniel Adam Briggs, CEO/Founder, eGenerations.com

[culturtha]

Dating Angst in the new Millenium ...

Meet the New Angst ...

Same as the old Angst :P


If it were not for ABC news running a story about FaceBook this a.m. I would have missed this story and found no reason to sign up at CNET news.

You placed some interesting links into your story ...

http://news.com.com/Looking+for+love+on+all+the+wrong+Facebook+pages/2010-1025_3-6200052.html
http://news.com.com/Parents+shaky+about+kids+safety+online/2009-1025_3-6104028.html

which led to other informative links ...

carry on ...


.

[Harfeld Bilgewing]

Interesting...

When you pull up her profile, one of the options is to "Poke her."

This site seems to have the creepy built right in.

[chassoto--2008]

They're just being creepy.

There have always been old creepy guys who flirt with
adolescents (though by standards of just a few decades ago, 17
isn't a "child" ). Facebook merely changes the methods with
which they "get their thrills." My wife tells me of her best
friend's creepy uncle who always used to be "way too interested"
in her and her friends. Get used to it. Learning how to deal with
these creeps is part of growing up. And never forget that public
shame is always a good deterrent. These guys think because
they're online, they're "anonymous" (or at least obfuscated)
enough to easily get away with being creepy. In real life, it's
easy to call them on it (sick your dad on the creepy uncle - he'll
take care of it). Online, perhaps you should just ignore it.

Charles

[J_Satch]

After reading...

...this bit of tripe, I would say grow up. When you do, maybe you'll realize the world doesn't revolve around ditzy 17 year olds. Ick.

From an old 45 year old married guy who DOESN'T use Facebook or any other such time-sink.

[wangbang]

Wow, I guess the truth really hurts!

I laugh at all these defensive posts from old, balding, pot bellied guys. Stop trying to act young, you're embarrassing yourselves. You should just do what I do--stay at home and watch porn all day on the Internet.

[MiaStrong]

Well done!

Get a life, all you critics. The girl is 17! She made her point with
humor and intelligence. Keep up the good work Sabena. You
have a promising writing career ahead of you!

[KinetiK_SK8R]

Writing Career?

Possibly, if she can find work with her narrow-minded, biased, discriminatory, and intolerant attitude. Just for the record, I am 50 and like a lot of things that teenagers like. My wife and I both watch and enjoy "Hannah Montana," "Kim Possible," and "SpongeBob Squarepants." Why should a person's chronological age dictate what they can and cannot like. Oh yeah, it's always "humor and intelligence" until someone loses an eye.

[ringaround]

Too many people are missing the point!

All you critics are missing the point here. Sabena wrote a very good article that was humorous as well. She is fortunate to have an internship with CNET and I applaud CNET for giving her the opportunity to show off her journalistic skills. And any middle-aged man inviting himself into a 17 year olds web space is probably up to no good and should be reported to her parents pronto!

[lostviking]

Actually not...

When you offend the major audience. This is CNET, not a kiddy site. Who do you think reads these articles anyway?

This is the most ridiculous article I've ever read on CNET. For one, who cares what a 17 yr old child thinks anyway. As was pointed out, the site was not written for kiddies, it was written for adults. Go back to the play ground little girl.

[jmex1]

laughable

This article just show how ignorant the younger gereration is.