The trouble with Facebook is you Pt 3

This post is a continuation of – The trouble with Facebook is you Parts 1 and 2

There’s nothing wrong with Facebook, I’ve got nothing against FB or Mark Zuckerberg personally or anything, I don’t even know the bloke. But I do have something against the 500,000,000 or so users of FB (or a good proportion of them).

These are my issues –

WHINING ABOUT PRIVACY ON FB – ITS LIKE ATTENDING COMIC-CON AND COMPLAINING ABOUT THE NUMBER OF GEEKS THERE

Heres a better analogy – Facebook is the backpage classifieds section (where all the brothel ads are) of the free, inner-city, youth orientated newspaper …. and you are the whore. Here’s where it gets confusing – you are seeking friends (Johns’) but your friends (Johns’) are also whores who are seeking other Johns’, who are also whores. Who are also Johns’ who are also seeking whores.
 
It’s a very large backpage.
 
This is how it works:
In order to find your friends (and have them find you) you must advertise ie pass all useful marketing information about you to Facebook. As soon as you advertise on the backpage, you open the backdoor.
In other words, in exchange for the ability to find and communicate with your friends, wherever they may be; play juvenile games; and “like” your friends’ appalling covers band, hopeless pet projects or mid-life crisis attempts at mid-life fame; you are selling your ass. It’s a pretty straightfortward, leave the cash on the side-table, kind of transaction.

Unfortunately, while you and your friends are happy having this self-serving, self esteem raising orgy-fest, someone has to pay for it. Lining up in the shadows to also have their way with you are some big, bad corporate dudes. Not some insipid white or asian dudes neither. Some well endowed, big, bad-ass black dudes.
 

Think of it this way – while you and your mates are getting into it the big bad corporate guys are giving it to you on the side, literally – see those ads on the right of your facebook page? That’s them.
 

There’s no need to get all whingy, whiny about it. They are the rules. You know what’s happening, it’s all there in the well-hidden account privacy settings. Stop your moaning! What they’re doing isn’t really non-consensual…in fact, you willingly give them all the information they want: your age, sex, location, relationship status, income, your photos, the kind of things you like, photos of you and your friends doing the things you like, your email address, all your phone numbers… its more like… you’re a cheap whore.

 
So stop complaining about privacy issues – you’re joking! You have a choice. You can either be out here in the open with all of us other Facebook whores or not on Facebook at all. At home. All alone. With your privacy. Using your rotary phone to call your little virgin friends.

ONE FOR THE YOUNGSTERS – IF YOU PERSIST IN CALLING YOUR FRIENDS YOUR FAMILY, I’M GOING TO GO ALL OLD-SCHOOL ON YOU AND BEAT THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU – YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHITS

I don’t care if its hip to call your pals brother, sister, bro, bra, sis or whatever, its not literal and its not cool with me to confuse them with your real family on FB. Understood amigo?

Mick may have given you his last lolly the day you broke up for Summer holidays when you were in grade four, and he lent you his super cool new bat and batting gloves for your last at bat this season. That makes him a very special guy.
 
Breanna has been with you in every grade since kindy and shared Brady with you as a boyfriend when you were both in love with him in grade 3. You were best friends in girl scouts and you both learned to ride horses together and you’ve had more sleep-overs than either of you can count. She is your BFF as they say today.
 
Mick is not your brother, he is your best friend. And he is definitely not your father.
 
Breanna is not your sister, she is your best friend. And is not your mother.
 
Is this hard to understand? Let me help you further here.
 

Your brother is the person who bashed you senseless as you grew up, who pulled your hair, taunted you, mimic-ed you, drove you crazy on family road-trips, taught you how to torture other kids with a ‘Chinese burn’, threw darts and stones at you, stabbed you with knives, forks and other threatening pieces of cutlery; he also had your back at every school fight you had, and until the age of six never left your side. When you went to school and he had to stay at home, he cried for a week; and should you ever need a blood transfusion or organ transplant he’ll be the one to physically tear it out of his own body (James Randi mystical healer style) to help you if needs be.
 

Your father is the guy who stops you from killing yourself, full stop. He stopped you jumping in the lake when you couldn’t swim and dived in fully clothed to save you after you crawled in behind his back anyhow. He’s the guy who showed you the wrong way to hold a bat, swing at a ball, pass the footy, make a half-decent attempt at a tackle, how to make a fist so you don’t break your fingers, drove to save you at any hour of the morning when you were stranded in town or at an out-of-control party, showed you how to change a tire and how to reverse down a wooded hillside at 50mph barely missing all the trees. (He didn’t really try to teach you that – that was your mistake).
 

Your sister is the girl who got you in more trouble with your parents than was humanly possible, whaled into you just as much as you did to her, but spent approximately one-tenth as much time in her room as you did, pointed at you in the cafeteria surrounded by all her friends then ran away giggling at you, during her slumber parties made up disparaging songs about you, put bubblegum in your hair and dressed you up like her own personal doll while covering you in make-up stolen from your mother then blamed the whole thing on you; she’s also the person who’ll hold your hand as you/your partner deliver your first-born, then comment how the child looks exactly like her, who cried with you over every lost girlfriend/boyfriend, set you up with a million of her friends, who talks to you at any hour of the day or night for as long as you want and will catch the next plane to be with you on the flimsiest of pretexts.
 

Your mother is the person who made absolutely certain you would have no fun in life, making you go to bed on time and refused to allow you to stay up to watch the horse-head-in-the-bed re-run episode of The Godfather when you were eight, she told you that the guy with the tatts in grade seven was no good for you, and set up a concentration camp style vigil for you should you try to escape to party with your friends in Junior High, she advised that Yale would probably be a better choice of college that the University of Hawaii, she is also the person who spent countless hours with you on homework assignments and driving you to and from every popular teenager event, chaperoned you and four other screaming teenagers to the American Idol concert, made you vast amounts of comfort food when requested and sometimes when not, and was the person who always knew how you felt and could somehow make it better.
 

Please do not confuse your friends with your family members. It makes you seem a tad ungrateful.

ULTIMATE WANKER STATUS UPDATERS OR “I WAS BULLIED AT SCHOOL – TAKE A LOOK AT ME NOW!”

These are real-life examples… I kid you not.

Please note:  in over 4 hours since its posting – not one ‘like’ or comment.

This guy collects friends, his excuse? He’s a Social Media marketer: this comment attracted one ‘like’ (his own!) and three comments out of 2870 friends. Let me do the math for ya. Thats a percentage conversion rate of 0.104. If I generated that sort of conversion working for his company – I hope I’d be fired. Bad product or bad promotion buddy … I’m going with the first.

And the second.
 

Listen up – get over it! That thing that made you bully-able at school is inherent in your personality. It doesn’t matter how much you big-note yourself, everyone still thinks you are a sad little person. Only those lower on the bully-able hierarchy are going to reply to your appalling wankery. And no one is impressed by your weasly sycophantic attempts at friend-making. You make everyone a little nauseous. We understand it, you can’t help who you are, and no amount of frisbee throwing, rock-climbing or cool concert-going can change that. You’re still a dick.

If indeed you have acquired skills or wealth… a little humility goes a long way. And might even help remove that mountain sized chunk off your shoulder.

It might.
 
But I’m not confident about that.

SIMONS EASTER EGG