The Best Texas Facebook Groups

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Texas Writer
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texas flag waving and facebook icon on a smartphone

Facebook can be a great social media website for Texans, if you y’all can avoid the onslaught of vitriolic content that tends to be preferred by the Facebook algorithm. Lately groups have formed on Facebook from all over Texas to help Texans talk to each other about different subjects. We wanted to try and help highlight the best of these groups that Texans should consider joining to make their experience on the platform better. We created this group by having our staff join a bunch of Groups and by asking members of our own Group to help us find the best ones in Texas.

Our Groups

We moderate and operate several Groups on Facebook in order to provide vitriol and spam free experiences for Texans. Our groups are always free of political, social, and religious content and they all focus on one area of life for Texans. Each group we manage has a goal of helping Texans live a better life, we will be building more groups as we grow.

Our research team ranked these groups fairly among other Texas Facebook Groups below judging them based on the same qualifications applied to other groups.

The Best Facebook Groups for Texans

We’ve ranked the best Facebook Groups for Texans in order of those we think offer the best experience, not size of the group. Instead we used metrics which we feel are more closely correlated to how a real Texan might judge a Facebook group’s quality they include: recent activity, level of spam, pressence of political or religious content, usefulness to Texans, and Texanness.

Our research team has spent months joining groups, reading posts, checking levels of spam, and working hard to figure out what groups on Facebook are authentic Texan groups and which ones are posers trying to lure Texans into spam or scams. Their work has resulted in the first-ever list of Texas Facebook Groups which all appear to be legitimately ran by Texans with a desire to communicate and share with their fellow Texans.

1. Texas Barbecue Group

If you’ve ever wanted to level up your Texanness this is probably a group you want to join. Members share tips on smoking brisket, choosing a pit, gathering wood (legally), rub recipes, and smoking pretty much anything else under the sun. There’s also occasional talk about starting a bbq business, a weekly photo contest, support for some of the smallest bbq’s in the state, and even tips on cooking “hot and fast” instead of “low and slow”.

Members of our research team joined this group and have been blown away by the frequent kindness, sharing, and helpfulness of the group members. Their willingness to help each other, even non-Texans as far away as Russia, learn to become better barbecue pit masters and their support of each other leading up to the release of the Texas Monthly Top 50 list was absolutely inspirational.

The group is ran by Derik Strelsky a former U.S. Army sniper turned Texas barbecue expert and is the former Ranch & Wild Life Manager at Yellow Rose Ranch. Derik is a welcome and familiar face to most Texas bbq joint owners as he makes his way around the state meeting owners, tasting bbq, taking photos, and sharing his experiences with his Texas Barbecue Facebook Group. Not only does he run the #1 group on Facebook, but we’d probably put him way up there with other Texas legends as one of the best among us. Our cowboy hats are tipped to you Mr. Strelsky for running such an incredible group!

  • Number of Members: 97,906
  • Visibility: Private
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/111896209449717/

2. Fans of TexasStormChasers.com Group

One of our favorite past times in Texas is watching the weather roll in. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the front porch of a country house in East Texas, in an apartment building in Austin, at a beach somewhere on the gulf, dodging the dust out in West Texas, or stuck in traffic in DFW. There’s just something captivating about watching the weather here in Texas and for those of us that don’t like to be too close to a severe storm event we have TexasStormChasers.com out there chasing down storms and tornadoes and streaming their footage to thousands of fans. The group even films storm events in other neighboring states like Kansas.

Their Group makes #2 on our list for another reason though, the photos posted by their fans. Fans of TSC post photos of sunrises, cloudy skies, rain storms, supercells, nature landscapes, lighting, sunsets, and even ‘the stars at night’ all day long. These photos make an incredibly addition to your Facebook News Feed and as one of our researchers said

“The photos frequently posted in this group remind you have the beauty and awesome power of Texas nature daily, that’s much better than political screaming matches”

  • Number of Members: 187,500
  • Visibility: Public
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fansoftexasstormchasers

3. You Know You’re From Texas When… Group

The idea behind this group is you’re supposed to make a post that finishes the sentence “You know you’re from Texas when….”. For those Texans over 35 it’s similar to the Jeff Foxworthy bit “You might be a redneck if…”. One of our researchers favorite things about this group is the fun they all seem to have with the responses, even though they might be from different parts of Texas or just moved here.

The group also has a fairly staunch stance against political and social posts that bring more division among Texans and has an amazing moderator Mary Ann Cody-Anderson who is often tough but fair and works hard to keep this big group of Texans fun. This group rightfully earns its stop in the top 3 and every Texan will probably enjoy being a member here.

  • Number of Members: 110,944
  • Visibility: Public
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2258312500/

4. Texas is Life Group

This is our flagship Facebook group. We use this group to communicate to our fans, share memes that don’t make our Facebook page or other social accounts, get feedback from users, talk about new products, and get input for future articles (like this one). According to our research team the biggest selling point is probably the sheer volume of unique memes we post and the fact that we find factual articles without bias to share for hot-button topics and then turn off the comments to keep arguments from breaking out.

Since we moderate this group we can assure you that it is heavily moderated. Meaning we put the time and effort into keeping spammers, scammers, and political activists out of our group. You don’t have to buy any of our merch or read any of our content to be a member of this group, all Texans near and far are welcome.

  • Number of Members: 9,724
  • Visibility: Private
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/texasislife1/

5. This is Texas Group

This is the group of a brand of Texas merchandise called “This is Texas Living” (we think). The group, however, is more focused on other things like nature photographs of Texas, stories, comics, YouTube videos, and pretty much anything related to Texas. We enjoy the level of moderation brought by the team and their level of commradery with each other. The group was founded by moderator and Texas entrepreneur Jarred Carter who lives in the Fort Worth, TX area.

All around a solid group, but a little on the quiet side. The more unexpected nature of the posts might turn some Texans off, but if you love a good ol’ hodgepodge of Texas content this is a pretty great group to join.

  • Number of Members: 56,725
  • Visibility: Private
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thisistexasliving/

6. Back Roads of Texas Group

There are two Facebook groups called “Back Roads of Texas” one of them appears to have splintered off from the other last year but our researchers focused on the original group. The idea behind this group is to post photos of views you might see if you were traveling down the back roads of Texas (thus the name) and were paying close attention to the sights. Which is great, because you should focus on driving and not getting lost in all of the beauty that is the rural Texas countryside.

In this group you’ll find nature photos, tree tunnels over narrow roads, gas stations, decorated hay bales, rusted out old cars, small town downtowns, Texas themed pasture gates, and of course plenty of shots of that gorgeous Texas sky.

We’re not entirely sure why a second group has created, the original is pretty dang awesome and one you should join if you love to see photos of Texas. Just, well, don’t be surprised if you start planning trips down some old back country roads yourself after joining.

  • Number of Members: 55,497
  • Visibility: Private
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/714566381906686/

7. Texas Recipes Club Group

Another group that is a MUST JOIN if you love cooking like a Texan. This group features non-stop conversations about Texas culinary style recipes. We’re talking cakes, pies, cookies, fried jalapeno poppers, glazes, enchiladas, queso, and so many other types of recipes. As an added bonus most of these recipes aren’t bogged down by a 127 page story from the recipe author. This is one group where we HIGHLY recommend using the “search” fuction built in to Facebook Groups to find a recipe you’re looking for before going to Google or other search engines.

The admin of this group, Kenneth Moore, does a pretty great job moderating and making sure posters follow the rules. That means no politics, social discussions, or annoying spammers. Our researchers did note that you shouldn’t expect all of the recipes to conform to Texas culinary traditions, some appear to come from other states or regions. However, this is a minor irritation of Texas-style cooks and might help when coming up with new ideas.

  • Number of Members: 95,550
  • Visibility: Public
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1109364292434897/

8. Abandoned Texas Group

This group is pretty much exactly what the name suggests – photos and stories about abandoned buildings in Texas. Or, at least we think it is. Our researchers weren’t given access to this group unfortunately, but were able to find screenshots of posts from the group around the web which appear to confirm the authenticity.

We can’t give you too much encouragement to join, but it definitely looks worth the effort if you like abandoned building photos.

  • Number of Members: 69,500
  • Visibility: Private
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/400745673392906/

9. Texas Foodies Group

Most “foodie” Facebook groups are constrained to one city or a small metro area, which means if you love traveling across Texas and finding new food experiences you have to join a variety of small groups, many of which have fallen out of being moderated or have died off due to too little content being posted by the group members. That’s where the Texas Foodies Group comes in.

This group is for foodies all across Texas to share photos, ask questions, and find new taste experiences across our great state. One thing that stands out is the sharing of upcoming food festivals and how quickly the community jumps in to help others find a great new restaurant, food truck, or bbq join in their area. We also moderate this group to keep spammers and scammers out, but catering companies, restaurants, food trucks, bbq pit masters, and bakers are all welcome to share photos of their creations to the group helping small businesses reach thousands of food-loving Texans instantly. You’ll also see articles about food events we’ve written about on our website in this group and for some reason the occasional photo of a Sonic hot dog (seriously?)

  • Number of Members: 4,670
  • Visibility: Public
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/texasfoodiesgroup/

10. Be Texas Proud Group

This group is all about proud Texans loving to be Texan. That means every so often it can get very flag waving patriotic (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It also appears to have been started as group for a Texas gift shop of the same name “Be Texas Proud” but there’s been very little if any product promotion in the group as of late.

Lately the group doesn’t appear to be very well moderated and posts by a few members appear to be dominating and pushing other members to stop posting or engaging. This might be temporary, but our researchers moved it down on our list out of concern that this Group might soon become a spam-filled paradise for overseas spammers and scammers – especially after Facebook’s new Public Group settings went live a few weeks ago.

Still, this group has been quite a great place in the recent past and we are hopeful the recent slow down in moderation is only a blip and that soon this group will regain its former glory.

  • Number of Members: 23,533
  • Visibility: Public
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/502221310181709/

11. Texas Small Business Owners Discussion, Networking, and Support Group

We’re not going to lie, we added this one but our researchers made us rank it at the bottom due to extremely low volumes of activity and due to most activity being against the rules.

The goal of our Texas Small Business Owners group is to build a group of small business owners that want to talk to each other about issues they all face, marketing tactics, and other issues. Unfortunately most members who qualify to join this group make unthoughtful spammy posts promoting their wares or services and never return. This of course makes us sad because nearly all other small business owner groups on Facebook are exactly the same – filled with non-stop spam (often not even related to running a business).

However, we are committed to making this a group for discussions among small business owners and not a spam haven. We’ll keep fighting the spammers and posting news articles for discussion in perpetuity. Please join us if you are a small business owner interested in making connections and having real discussions about business in Texas.

  • Number of Members: 181
  • Visibility: Public
  • Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TexasSmallBusiness/

Have we missed any Texas Facebook Groups? Leave us a comment below (you need to signup for TexasisLife.com to do so) and we’ll make sure to add the Group you recommend a review and add them to the list of they qualify.

All membership counts accurate as of: 12/1/2021

Featured photo a compilation of photos provided courtesy of Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash and Anton on Pexels

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