Facebook - Our First Taste Of Social Media

Ah, Facebook. The first time most of us (particularly people around my age - 27) had our first taster of what social media would be like. Facebook was THE website everyone wanted to create a profile on in 2008/2009. After MSN, Facebook was the next thing I would check to see if any of my school friends had updated their status. Facebook allowed us to connect with so many people in our local town/city, even beyond that.

Fast forward to 2020. Well, Facebook is not seen as everybody's favourite app. I think it's safe to say it's caused us some grief one way or another over the years. Those direct/indirect statuses at someone, the arguments in the comments section and being pissed off at Sandra next door for lighting fireworks at 1am and broadcasting it on her profile. I think the only reason I use Facebook now is to check for any gossip and find out who's having a baby. moving into a new house or getting engaged/married. 

The thing is, so many apps came along and took over Facebook in terms of popularity. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, even Tumblr have gone up in terms of popularity and demand over the years. 

As much as we all like to think of Facebook negatively nowadays, I wanted to write this post to take a look back on the times when Facebook used to be a fun and in a way, an innocent platform that we all enjoyed once upon a time. Do you remember doing one of these things? -

1) Liking 'those' pages

'Like if you like tomato ketchup' 

'Like if you like McDonalds' 

'Like if you've seen Titanic more than 16 times'  

Yeah, you name it, somebody created a page titling it with anything and everything. The thing is, back in the day, we all ended up clicking the like button. It just seemed the right thing to do!

2) Poking people

And that isn't a euphemism. Poking somebody was the same as sending somebody three loves on Bebo. Ah Bebo, what a platform. Anyway, poking someone to get their attention on Facebook was equivalent to swiping right on Tinder. The good thing about poking someone on Facebook has it was unlimited, you could easily piss off someone if you had a devilish mood on you!

3) Playing games

I remember playing Text Twist after school every time I came home. There were so many other games that we could play, I can't remember many others but if you can, let me know in the comments!

4) Are you more of an angel or a devil?

Those quizzy things where you answer a question or two and it says 'You're 97% devil' and it gives you reasons why you are. More often than not, it's a load of rubbish!

5) Having very public conversations on our friend's profiles

I look back on my memories every day to see what I got up on this day 1, 2, 3 even 10 years ago. I look back at cringe sometimes at some of the conversations I had with my Facebook friends for the whole world to see. Messenger didn't really exist back then. If you wanted a conversation with someone, it had to be made in the public domain. It meant writing something on your friends profile then waiting for them to reply with them writing something on your profile. It was never gripping stuff, more often than not it was my college friends asking me what to write for D1 on our next assignment. 

6) Starting our statuses with 'is'

"Is excited for the Summer holidays!"

"Is doing nothing"

"Is going to bed"

"Is eating a KFC"

Yep, we started a status with 'Is'. Back then, we thought we had to make grammatical sense. God knows why we did that, we just did. 

What are your memories of when you first started using Facebook? Let me know!