Facebook Fail

I don't know what I expected when I made the decision to use Facebook as a vehicle to keep in touch with people in my world, but I'm a bit taken aback by all the posts on my pages from people I may--or may not--know.  I open my Facebook account and there are photos and messages between people I don't even know. I have a long list of people I don't know who want to be my friend, which strikes me oddly: how do they even know I am looking for friends?

All in all, I'm not enthused with my Facebook experience.  I joined a local community group to get information about what's going on in my residential area, and there are word fights going on between the person who started the page and other people who have joined it.  There's profanity, poor spelling, atrocious grammar, and just generally things I'm really not into at this stage of my life.

I keep getting messages on my cellphone about people who want to be my friend on Facebook, but there is no sign of them on Facebook and I have no idea how to "friend" them from my phone. Some of the contacts I'd like to be "friends" with because they are part of my past and I'd love to know what they are doing in the present; other people I don't even know, but it seems that having a person in common means you want to "friend" these strangers.

I am not a big fan of the Facebook experience.  I'm going to give it a try for a solid month before I make any final decisions about whether I'll keep my page or go dark.  If I had to make the call today, I'd say toodle-loo to the world of friends I don't know.

UPDATE: OMG, now my gmail account is filled with FB posts and people!  I didn't know that what shows up on my FB page will also become part of my email experience.  This is too much, too invasive; I don't know if I'll last the month of trying this experiment.