A good example of why I think facebook can be interesting, engaging, and positive:

Bigotry is something that is typically slow to change, over generations. However, here, a racist man blogs about being personally offended that a "mexican" was working at the "American Pavillion" at disney! Unable to conceive that he could be an example of a true American. Well, in this new, connected world, someone posted it on facebook and in 10 minutes it's forwarded around the world to hundreds of millions of people (in this particular case, fueled by the timing of the GOP's RNC convention and because the bigot was a staunch republican), helping us all realize how much racism is still out there, and helping this man realize he still has racist attitudes. It is a powerful, accelerated force in the evolution of mankind to educate us all about how we should be treating each other.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/31/781511/rnc-delegate-offended-by-presence-of-mexican-at-disneys-epcot-center/ 


people responded on facebook with all sorts of insights like this one:

i think it's a good sign that we're seeing more and more about these kinds of attitudes and incidents. there's nothing new or unusual about this man's attitude... half the country feels like that and thinks it's fine. ...it's a good thing that they are being dragged out into the light where they can curl up and die (my apologies to the insect world). twenty years ago there was no way of subjecting this man (and people like him) to the kind of global ridicule that can make him realize that there's actually something terribly wrong with his attitude. so it's a good thing all around, i think.


So, we can poo poo facebook all we want for being a waste of time, which most of it is, reading about our not-even-very-close-friends' trip to the grocery store or something, but hell, even there, we become a little more aware of society! And sometimes, like this racists post, a whole lot more powerful things happen.