I'd Like to take a Book to the Face of Facebook Part 1

Remember when people actually spoke and interacted with each other face to face? Man, the 90's were a long time ago...

I hate Facebook. I hate it so much that I will not capitalize it for the rest of this blog even though it is technically a proper noun. Let us do a list of why facebook itself as a "Social Networking" community just plain sucks:

1. facebook is like a bathroom wall that everyone writes on except real bathroom walls are more interesting.
2. facebook gives needy people a place to go (without actually getting off their presumably fat asses) where everyone knows their name. Like "Cheers" without booze and Norm.
   
3. facebook is like masturbating: nobody's stimulated except you.
4. If you really wanted to be my friend, you wouldn't have waited 10 years to find me on some crappy website and add me-either be my friend in reality or not in cyberspace.
5. I really don't care about your damn updates...."work is boring..." or "the baby being sooo cute..."-your mundane life does not interest me.
6. You cannot troll for a date like you can on MySpace.
   
7. EVERYONE is a member. All the sheep follow the shepard.
8. Cyber-bulling. Back in the day, we would meet by the bike rack and settle it with our fists-now, people publish trash and lies about someone that can be access ALL over the world.
9. That members post pictures of themselves doing drugs or other illegal activities or sexting pictures to piss off their ex-girlfriend-what?!? If I was going to go and smoke a joint, I never took a picture and put it up at the bulletin board at school for attention and if I had a naked picture of an ex, I wouldn't publish it everywhere-I'd just show it to my good friends....So why the hell would you put it ALL over the Internet? They must not be the brightest knife in the drawer....
   
10. Profiles. Why would you put all of your personal information all over a website that everyone can look at? I don't care who your "friends" are or what you "like" or how I rank on your latest "poll". Like Tyler Durden said : "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile." No matter how many friends or whatever you have on your profile, all of it is just zeroes and ones-be proud of yourself, not your facebook page.
    
11. The Privacy Policy on the website. facebook is allowed to advertise at you, you cannot delete anything, ANYONE can look at your page (no ability to block), they collect information about your habits and sell that information to marketing companies, they will still email you even if you cancel your account and finally (and the worst) by using facebook you consent to allow the government to look at WHATEVER they want on your page.

I came across an Op-Ed piece in the Guardian by Tom Hodgkinson called "With friends like these..." from 2007. The numbers in the article are a bit off due to the age of the article but this man DETESTS facebook-it's a riot!!! :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

If you look at a press release from facebook, the numbers of users are staggering:

• 400 million active members, 200 million that log-in everyday
  
• Average user has 130 friends (man, I got like 3 drinking buddies and my dog-that's all I need)
• People spend over 500 BILLION minutes a month on facebook (I can't even calculate how many days/weeks/years that is as my calculator doesn't go that high!)
• 25 BILLION pieces of content on the website in total

Looking at the CNN.com headline "What You Should Know About facebook's changes" (http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/21/facebook.changes.users/index.html?hpt=T2) all I can think is 1984 (the book- Big Brother and all, not the Van Halen album, which is awesome in its own right). What facebook is going to do is expand it little "likes" icon to EVERYWHERE on the net. No dislike button, but it's OK for the OK. Along with your personal file on the website, now facebook can track every website you touch and then use the "like" button to fill out a marketing composite of you. Then the spaming begins. Then this profile either goes to the NSA, CIA or Homeland Security just to "make sure" your not a enemy combatant. These sheep on facebook do not realize all of their privacy laws given in the 4th Amendment have just gone out the window. This is called domestic spying. This is what the Gestapo or the Stasi or KGB did do. However, since most Americans have blinders on or take too many pharmaceuticals or are just plain ignorant they go along with the trends, which is what the US Government and the New World Order want-Americans calm as Hindu cows. That makes the implementation of martial law and a police state and the rise of neo-fascism in the US much more tolerable to your average American. Back in the 50's during McCarthyism, the fuzz would show up at your house and discuss things with you. Now they can sit at a computer in Langley and make one phone call and you'll be in an outsourced Central European torture camp all because you looked at Al-Jazzerra too much. The "founder" of facebook mark zuckerberg (who, again, name I will not capitalize) as you can see has built along with peter thiel and jim breyer quite a little website. Part 2 of this blog will continue with the discussion of these three bad, bad men. Enjoy the quotes on the "benefits" of social networking and the worldwide global Internet village...

"The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life." ~Andrew Brown

Internet: absolute communication, absolute isolation. ~Paul Carvel

Television to brainwash us all and Internet to eliminate any last resistance. ~Paul Carvel

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect. ~Esther Dyson

The Internet is the trailer park for the soul. ~Marilyn Manson