Facebook is a fad...

Even the US President warns against the current social networking tool Facebook ("Crackbook"). "Are you on Facebook" has become one of the most common ice breaker lines for young people and the subject of many adult dinner parties discussing what the youth doing, thinking they are totally hip - you don't need to invade their cyber space too. However when I reveal that I don't have an account I am met with mixed emotions, commonly "how do you survive?!", and more interestingly "I wish I could delete mine...", as if they were trying desperately to reunite with the real world. I did however dip my cyber stick temporarily to promote my 21st birthday for a month which was interesting to explore the inner workings of this society. While it served its purpose effectively, I began to sympathize with those who had been jealous of my rock solid resistance. In order to make my escape smoother, I created a fake email address to use, however I was annoyed by the details that it tried force out of me, as this beast wanted to dice me up and turn me into a tray of statistics. Thankfully I made it out alive without too severe withdrawal symptoms...

Another annoying aspect was the miniature box you are given to send personal messages, and I really wandered whether this community encourages communication? It seems to be more in line with Twitter limiting you to 140 characters per post - 20 less than a text message! 140 characters provides a rather limited space to transmit any kind of information in my opinion.
We cant concentrate on something for more than 140 characters, surely we're ready to downsize again... It seems these minimized communication tools are growing, and, shrinking. I wonder if the Facebook resistance is growing?

How about the collapse of Facebook? It seems they are running into increasing problems,
particularly with the content copyright, as people wake up and realize how they are locked into 'the system' and at mercy to heavy statistical analysis. Who knows they could be bandying your face around the net!

2 comments:

    Nice post! So what's the upper age limit for joining Facebook, then?!

     

    Quite a few of my friends seem to have their parents and even grandparents in their circle of Facebook friends. I think that it's nice to see this inter-generational networking going on. On the other hand, when my parents mentioned that they'd recently received a request to join Facebook I didn't exactly encourage them to accept!