Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Reasons why I'm officially bored with Facebook

It started as a great way to check in on people I hadn't heard from in years and a more convenient way to keep up with the people I've always kept up with. These are still the primary reasons why I'm not closing my account.

The problem is that the task of finding the info I'm looking for requires me to wade through an ever-expanding mound of sludge that shouldn't exist even in e-space. Specifically, I'm talking about:
  • The people who think that the status update is for chronicling any variation of their mood, no matter how inconsequential, i.e., "Charles Krauthammer It's Tuesday, and I still have a case of the Moandays!!! :()" Gee, thanks, that's great to know.
  • The people who leave meaningless clues as to what they are doing in an attempt to be clever, i.e., "David Broder is catching the gravy wave."
  • How it's high school all over again. You can share that you've been promoted to vice president following your spectacular contribution in the fight against cancer, only to be met with a profound silence from 281 "friends" who have nothing to say. Meanwhile, the hot, rich girl from the dorm gets 87 comments after letting the world know about her dislike of "Moandays."
  • Friends who give NASCAR updates. "Jonah Goldberg has finished his second bag of pork rinds in celebration of Junior Earnhardt's awesome left turn."
  • The fact that 90 percent of my page this morning has been taken over by other people's quiz results.
  • The fact that 90 percent of those quizzes are of the "How well do you know ______?" variety, featuring people I've never heard of.
  • How it encourages joining of the meaningless kind. I recall seeing about 50 different "Make Facebook go back to the old design" groups start up after Facebook came out with a new design. The problem was that the new design was better. People just didn't want to spend the five minutes necessary to get used to it. It was easier to complain.
  • Which leads to my problem about the predominance of the group "We will not pay for Facebook, eveh." This kind of attitude is the reason newspapers are dying. Honestly, I'd be happy to fork over $1 a month if it meant Facebook could come up with some kind of kick-ass program that could block people from posting quiz results. But we know the attitude of the Internet. As soon as they charge a fee -- no matter how reasonable -- everyone will flee to the latest cheap version of Facebook. Or, God forbid, go back to MySpace.
  • It's become cliche. Every newspaper and blog out there has put together some kind of wacky piece featuring a theoretical group of world leaders gossiping on Facebook. These invariably feature Kim Jong-Il -- a man who's starved thousands of his people and now has the bomb -- posting on his dislike of "Moandays! :p"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

right on!!

Anonymous said...

all right already! How about a new blog?

Seagraves said...

I aim to please. Should have something up today.