Social Question

jordym84's avatar

Where is the fun in spending your entire vacation on Facebook?

Asked by jordym84 (4752points) June 17th, 2013

A few weeks ago one of my coworkers went on a last-minute, one-week vacation trip to Japan and then China, with a pit stop in Germany. During that week, I kid you not, he updated his Facebook status at least twice every hour. He’s a serial poster to begin with, but he went bat-shit crazy during his trip. Usually I check my FB once or twice a day and each day when I logged on, there they were, at least ten new status updates from him. He started posting about his trip the moment he found out that he was going away and didn’t stop until the returned home. He posted everything, including minute-by-minute accounts of where he was, what he was doing (i.e. showering in his airline’s first class club’s bathroom in Frankfurt, eating a pulled pork sandwich in Tokyo, visiting Hong Kong Disneyland, etc.), who he was with, and so on and so forth.

I very rarely post anything on FB and when I go on vacation it doesn’t even cross my mind to go on the internet, I disconnect from everything. Now, I’m not judging his decision to spend his entire vacation updating his FB status (well, maybe a little), but wouldn’t you agree that it’s a bit counterproductive to do so at such a constant rate when you’re supposed to be enjoying the places you’re visiting and taking in the sights? He’s the most aggressive offender I’ve had on my FB, but a good number of my friends are guilty of this too, though not to such an extreme degree. Why do you think people do this? Is it just another way to show off? Or is there some legitimate explanation for this behavior? Am I missing something here?

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11 Answers

Michael_Huntington's avatar

It’s like people in museums who block your view because they’re taking pictures of things.
OR PEOPLE WHO CURL IN THE SQUAT RACK.

talljasperman's avatar

Saves time and effort, all rest and play. A staycation is similar, to avoid stressful human person to person live interaction.

genjgal's avatar

Sometimes, some things are so wonderful a facebooker can’t contain himself. You kind of feel like everybody else has to see it too.

flutherother's avatar

I’m the opposite, I disconnect entirely from the web when I travel and immerse myself in reality. I catch up online when I get back.

mrentropy's avatar

If he’s getting to Facebook from a phone then he’s not spending his entire vacation on Facebook. He’s still out, about, seeing, and doing things. It just so happens that it’s possible to post updates frequently.

It sounds like he was happy and excited to be on this vacation and was happy to spread it around. Maybe other, less judgmental, friends were reading and commenting and generally happy to see that he was actually doing something.

At least there are still people out there willing to let him know that he wasn’t enjoying his vacation correctly.

syz's avatar

I just came back from a 10 day vacation with no phone, no tv, no internet, and no radio; it was fabulous. Once back, I uploaded about 200 photos ;)

gailcalled's avatar

^^ Where were you? I’m guessing not in a big city.

syz's avatar

@gailcalled Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, and Glacier.

gailcalled's avatar

Sounds glorious. (How were the bugs?)

syz's avatar

Not bad at all. We were well in advance of peak season, so it was still pretty cool (lows around freezing, highs in the 50’s). We also hiked the trails at dawn to avoid people – we’re pretty antisocial (it worked, we had the trails entirely to ourselves).

gailcalled's avatar

(Antisocial works for me.)

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