Althouse: "Facebook, I wanna thank you..."

May 27, 2012

"Facebook, I wanna thank you..."

And I want to thank you... for the sublime horribleness.

(Via Buzzfeed.)

22 comments:

pm317 said...: That was terrible and I did even get to a third of it..; 5/27/12, 9:23 AM
edutcher said...: People The Blonde and I know want us to get on there, but we keep resisting.

And, when an old friend from work contacted me on LinkedIn and told me she didn't want to be on a more mature site, I knew that IPO was going nowhere.

The song just verifies it.; 5/27/12, 9:41 AM
pm317 said...: edutcher said...
------------

Real people know how bogus that whole thing is. Ran into a semiconductor guy on our recent trip (standing in line at Versailles) and you should have heard him scoffing at this IPO. OTH, my nephew-in-law, was telling me how I was missing the cool experience and he likened my resistance to how his parents never learned anything about email (oddly enough he also knows that I'm a CS researcher).; 5/27/12, 9:59 AM
Dante said...: So Ann, what would your song sound like?; 5/27/12, 10:12 AM
edutcher said...: Oops,

s/b wanted, not didn't want; 5/27/12, 10:19 AM
Temujin said...: I just unplugged. I 'requested' my account be deleted from Facebook. You can't just quit. They pull your account and place it in isolation for 14 days, hoping you'll reconsider.

It'll never happen. I never used it to begin with. I only joined a few years ago because it seemed like I was supposed to as an Earthling. But frankly, I'm too busy trying to create a business, live a life. Who the f*** cares if I road a bike today, or what I had to eat at a restaurant yesterday? And, what the f*** is the deal with that farm game? What is that?

All in all- people today think entirely too much of themselves....or not enough of themselves. I haven't figured out which it is yet. Either they think the world is waiting with baited breath to hear what they just did (picked lint from my navel) or their lives are so empty that by 'friending' others they can live their day through the lives of others.

Aaach. What a waste of time of life. Get back your lives. UnFace yourselves.

Ironic though, that I just spent 5 minutes writing this crap on someone else's blog...as if anyone should care about my opinion of FCBK.

I need to shut off the computer now. Hit the button...walk away....just don't look back...don't...look....back...; 5/27/12, 10:22 AM
Temujin said...: Ooops. Make that...'rode' a bike today. Aw...f*** it.; 5/27/12, 10:23 AM
pm317 said...: @Karnival, glad to have you here, my friend.; 5/27/12, 10:30 AM
bagoh20 said...: I think Facebook is an awesome idea that many people do get a lot of enjoyment from. They find connection with family and friends and even strangers that they would never have otherwise.

I still hate it, because of its very creepy stalking of you where ever you go, and the terrible execution of the software that corrals you into a narrow usage pattern. The program is just terrible, the way it functions. But, many people get so much from it as a social mechanism that they just put up with it.

There are more people than ever out there who have no other way of keeping in touch or having a social life at all. For them it is a wonderful tool. I used it a lot when it first appeared and now hardly at all, but I did reestablish long lost relationships with old friends, and that was pretty cool.

It's one of those things that could be just fantastic if different people with different agendas ran it. If they just wanted it to be a simple good thing, without trying to make it the biggest thing, or to wring every penny out of it.

It's just like my state of California, a wonderful idea screwed up by people who can't leave a thing alone, or keep their nose out of other people's business.; 5/27/12, 10:58 AM
Big Mike said...: Does it get better after 42 seconds? Because that's when I quit.; 5/27/12, 11:04 AM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Jeez the pop culture tide & the MSM has really turned against Facebook. It almost sounds vindictive- what did FB ever do to the MSM- shoot almost every MSM website has a link to its own FB community. I don't get it.; 5/27/12, 11:45 AM
pm317 said...: I just had an hour-long chat with my grade school friend back home. I do this every Sunday. Chat is just a glorified version of good old Unix talk (look at that simple name) program and that is enough for me.; 5/27/12, 12:05 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Very common in stay at home mom circles to make an acquaintance in real life and then connect for a play date through Facebook. Nearly indispensable for that purpose. Yes, you could collect the contact information of the five moms you just met at a birthday party, class, or play date, but that comes across as much more forward and is unnecessarily fiddly and time consuming with children around.

So I like Facebook for that.

I also like it for seeing the children of people I went to school with.

I like that a handful of people use it to share interesting links.

And finally, I love and hate that it offers a concise look into the current decline of Western civilization, mainly in the form of groupthink, peer pressure, and probably unprecedented distraction and superficiality.; 5/27/12, 12:27 PM
Luke Lea said...: The Edsel of IPO's; 5/27/12, 12:34 PM
Anonymous said...: Sweet Jebus, I made to :36 before my head exploded. What a steamed shit pie.; 5/27/12, 2:45 PM
Bob R said...: I got on Facebook a couple of years ago when a group from our church was in Haiti when the earthquake hit. Someone's cell phone was working and was able to post to FB that everyone had survived the original quake. It just seemed like a good way for someone without a blog to communicate with a lot of people in an unintrusive way. I kind of like it as a "low contact" social interaction.; 5/27/12, 6:07 PM
Bob R said...: I got on Facebook a couple of years ago when a group from our church was in Haiti when the earthquake hit. Someone's cell phone was working and was able to post to FB that everyone had survived the original quake. It just seemed like a good way for someone without a blog to communicate with a lot of people in an unintrusive way. I kind of like it as a "low contact" social interaction.; 5/27/12, 6:07 PM
ALP said...: As others have noted, FB is great for streamlining communication with others. I was on it for 3 years - in that time I reestablished contact with people I had not seen in years.

However, once you catch up with everyone...meh. I left due to the privacy issues others have noted, in addition to the growing commercialization of the site. There are too many ads and attempts to influence your spending habits. There was a point in the past where they should have left it alone...but they didn't. The analogy I use is: it started out as a great digital "coffee shop", and ended up a digital "mall".

I would return if I ever started my own business, as it seems to have evolved into a great marketing tool and a way to get the word out about your business.

But I got FB off my back, only to get an Android tablet....now I've got omnipotent Google following my every move...

(Please, oh mighty Google, don't take that comment too personally...); 5/27/12, 7:08 PM
Astro said...: I'm sure all the blind computer users are thankful that they spelled out www.facebook.com. And I'm impressed that they hired a deaf person to write the music.; 5/28/12, 7:40 AM
Tarkwell Robotico said...: The Althouse song would be a Cole Porter patter.; 5/28/12, 7:42 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: My Internet connection finally worked well enough for me to watch part of this video. Is it a parody? If not, who is it supposed to appeal to?; 5/28/12, 3:08 PM
SukieTawdry said...: It seems one must have a Facebook presence these days, so I opened an account but it's under my blog commenter's name so it's meaningless to whatever passes for the real world on Facebook. There is stuff posted on my page, but I have no idea where it comes from.; 5/28/12, 5:20 PM