Facebook clutter junkie here!

Curious to know where everybody is gathering these days well. If you have a small business, what are you using by way of social media to connect with clients?

I am on none of the above. I have only a limited amount of energy to spend on doing things and to me things like Facebook etc. look like a HUGE energy hog. When I found Barnmice I got thrilled, now I could "be" with horsepeople without having to worry too much about internet security, ads for products that I have no desire or use for, and I do not have to worry about Facebook deciding to sell my private information to whoever wants to pay for it.

I almost joined Facebook years ago as people here on Barnmice switched to it, people I wanted to keep in touch with. Then I read the "conditions of use" and learned that once I wrote ANYTHING on Facebook, Facebook OWNED it and I no longer had any control over my writing or information.

So people, ANYTHING you put on Facebook, any writing, music, photos, videos, art work or information, YOU NO LONGER OWN IT, FACEBOOK DOES. One day I expect Facebook to sue people trying to profit from their own personal work for "stealing" something that Facebook considers their own property. NO THANK YOU, I keep off of Facebook, I will probably NEVER be on Facebook, and I feel sympathy for all the Facebook users out there who have innocently given Facebook, for free, their information, work, creativity, and private information, work and information that Facebook is busy trying to profit from and will sell to the highest bidder without your permission or knowledge.

No I don't. I comment on the COTH forum sometimes but I find the responses on Barnmice a lot friendlier, on the COTH forum I feel very much an outsider. Barnmice is SO MUCH BETTER for what I can handle on line, at least here I do not feel like I have to apologize for existing and having an opinion that others do not share.

The COTH forum has gotten better this past year. I was never personally flamed but I weighed my responses a lot not to provoke the type of knee-jerk reactions to posts that I used to see there. Often it was just not worth my time and energy to respond to the posts. By the way when I was growing up I lived abroad because my father was in the USA embassy, foreign service. I KNOW how to be diplomatic, I had to be diplomatic all through grade school in foreign cultures (Chile and Uruguay.)

But on the brighter side, these types of undiplomatic and unnecessarily dismissive and abusive utterances I use to see on the COTH forum lead me to realize that too much sitting trot probably causes human brain damage, both from repeated mini-concussions of the front part of the brain and, I think (I have no proof) that it can also cause damage to the brain stem. Therefore nowadays I do not sit the trot for very long. I don't need any more brain damage with my MS!!!! When I do sit the trot I work on not pounding on the horse's back (thereby avoiding the worst concussive effects), even so I severely limit the amount of sitting trot I do. All three ladies I've ridden for, two of them with decades of teaching riding, think my sitting trot is very good, and the horses will eventually relax their backs under me and start "swinging" reducing the concussive effects even more.

I make allowances for the bad behavior of those that do a lot of sitting trot, these riders do not realize what they are doing to their brains. I just try to avoid them.

And I LOVE Barnmice, I love that beginners are welcome here and can ask questions without getting crucified for not knowing as much as people who have riden for decades and at the same time experienced horse people can discuss issues. It can be a delicate balance keeping a site open and welcoming while keeping the abusers acting politely. Barnmice does this very, very well.