Well Annie and everybody, I never thought I would create such interest so thank you for all your comments. It's so reassuring to know that I'm not the only grumpy old man or woman. I think I have caught up with the idea that there is "an off switch", e.g. very useful to use the mute button when "watching the tele", a little more testing though when wading through "print "media .

  So it seems the big social media companies are not the most popular corporate beings at the moment and it is nice to be comfortably, but not too comfortably, anonymous on the internet.

Rodney.

"each to their own" is part of the equation. The other part is that different platforms work well for one thing, but not necessarily well for another. For me, Facebook works best for social chat with family and friends. In the OCC,  and also for us, I believe, it works best for social chat and announcements of arrivals and departures, and for sharing snippets of news that are of interest to sailors. Measured debating of weightier topics works better on the fora. I'm glad that we established, early on, a tone of friendly, civilised and useful debate here. I dropped in on another FB sailing group recently, found that there was too much pointless chat from "keyboard sailors" for my liking, and soon dropped out. Each to their own.

Some of us junkies are just insatiable!  And perhaps it casts the net a bit wider, for those who are not JRA members.  Some of these non-members may even be encouraged to join us.

I have just discovered that there is an "International Facebook Junk Rig group". Why are not we satisfied with the JRA website? Why should we have to wade through yet more elelectronic media diarrhoea? How many apps does one have to post on or read to have adequate/excessive media exposure? I feel the JRA site covers all the things that Facebook, Twitter and etc do without the commerciality of advertisements etc. How restful.

Over the years I have so much enjoyed the humour (unrivalled) and technical expertise and knowledge published on this site that I do not understand the need for yet more exposure. I feel very cosy on the JRA website. I suppose it's a question of "each to their own" or am I just becoming a grumpy old man?