Compare "Facebook has a heart... a blackish-green, mystifyingly obscure heart," where I encountered a large looming male with a parrot and a cockatoo and a squat crow-headed woman feeding a goose while a long-hair child turned away and had nothing to do.
Today's Facebook image has only female humans — one old and one young. The old one — Facebook must have chosen this specifically for me — is knowable as old because her hair is white and she's wearing glasses and white anklets and she has cats — one to pet and one perched on her back. Maybe her back aches — her non-cat-petting hand is in the oh-my-aching-back position. How long has she been bent over in the go-ahead-and-sit-on-my-back position? This woman Facebook thinks is me has a head so empty that the shape of the cat shows through it. Why can't I stand up and heave this beast off my back? How long have I been petting the standing cat? Perhaps for all eternity in this blackish-purple limbo.
The woman who Facebook has determined does not represent me is squatting grasping a rabbit and attempting to interest it in a carrot. Unlike normal cartoon rabbits, this rabbit is blasé about a carrot. Unlike normal cartoon humans, this woman has 5 fingers, and it looks like too many fingers, thus explaining, at long last, why normal cartoon character hands have 4 fingers.
The cat in the foreground contemplates a ball of yarn. Like the rabbit with the carrot, the cat does not react to the yarn like a normal cartoon cat. This thing that should be so exciting — yarn! to a cat — is lackluster, something to be gazed at with ennui, like the tiny world itself. The world of Facebook, where groups are at the heart, and the group their sophisticated algorithms have offered to me is, apparently, cats. Or rabbits. Or aching backs. Or anklets (yes, the "I Wear Anklets" group! I must join!). Or see-through bulbous hairdos. Or Forcing Carrots on Rabbits. Or Gazing Ennui-Filled at a Symbol of the World.
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Headline: Black Cat Eats Grandma's Brain
I really want to see the Russian version.
Unlike normal cartoon rabbits, this rabbit is blasé about a carrot.
Also different from real rabbits.
Now that happiness experts have shown that women are happiest when not married and without children, Facebook shows the future of womankind.
It's cats and bunnies all the way down.
I'm going to suggest you get off of Facebook. You're spending way too much mental power trying to figure out what this malignant organization thinks of you. You're letting it permeate your being and poison your mind.
If you were getting something for free, you are the product
"Not all cats are good mothers from the word go. Some will not eat their kittens, but will simply refuse to have anything to do with them. And trying to force her to show some maternal care towards the youngsters may end in the opposite reaction. She wants rid of them and so will do anything to make sure this happens, including eating them when your back is turned."
At least they're not taco bowls.
All together with the grandkids and their parents for the weekend. The parents have abandoned facebook. The mom's both say they are much more content about their own households, not being barraged by other moms accounts of Jr's super human accomplishments, and all the tranquility others have, but seem to escape their own grasp. Grand kids are 4 to 9. These are families that should be prime demographic of facebook. Lots of sharing of pics for the the far flung family members. But they are done with it.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/05/anti-eu-right-wing-parties-win-big-in-european-election/
Today, the heart of Facebook is blackish-purple.
"Compare...a blackish-green, mystifyingly obscure heart," where I encountered a large looming male with a parrot and a cockatoo...
Mine, a more pinkish-purple this morning.
Again with the microcephaly.
May there be a message here, about what Facebook expects from its users?
Cats can indeed ignore balls of yarn. They are very very good at ignoring things, until they don't.
Lack of oxygen can do that.
Maybe Renoir should have tried the four finger trick.
I remember when my mother and her friends wore their hair like the old lady in the graphic: a large mound of loops perfectly shaped like a sphere. Every Saturday she would get her hair "fixed" which involved sitting under a dryer for an hour or two. Now she just wears a bob.
"Groups are now at the heart of Facebook"
What was there before?
I will play devil's advocate here and say I like my FB groups. It is a chance for me to discuss political issues where my over sensitive family members will not see what I post. But I agree the artwork is lame! Needs more rats LOL!
Speaking of graphics: it looks like Google has decided not to ignore Memorial Day this year. Their logo is all grey --I guess that is hipper than black--but at least it's a gesture. And they will play taps at 3pm.
All kidding aside.....I might guess that you have no photos pasted to facebook, or you only have landscapes posted?
By the way, facebook does scan all your photos, and looks for faces. They can even identify dogs.
What Whitney said.
Just walk away from Facebook.
Want to share things with friends and family? Email lists work better than Facebook. Even better, you own your content in lists, not Facebook
I started a Nevil Shute email list in 1998. We quickly built to over 5000 members. I thought a few of us might get together for a birthday dinner to celebrate his centennial in 99. It wound up a spectacular 3 day affair with his daughters, director of A Town Like Alice, the desk he wrote his novels at, a propeller he built as a student and much more.
http://www.nevilshute.org/abq1999.php
Embrace the power of lists!
John Henry
Today, the heart of Facebook is blackish-purple.
Facebook's heart has always been gold.
Hard and yellow
FB's heart has been black since the beginning.
Vampire hunter impales vampire rabbit with wooden carrot.
Zombie cat eats grandman's brains.
Yarn ball exhales ghost of cat.
Whitney @ 8:14: “I'm going to suggest you get off of Facebook. You're spending way too much mental power trying to figure out what this malignant organization thinks of you. You're letting it permeate your being and poison your mind.”
Respectfully disagree. I think Prof. A is having a great old time mocking in pseudo-serious fashion the rubbish offered by FB. I call it rubbish only because she has gone to the trouble of observing it closely and deconstructing it, offering hypotheticals about why FB made these design choices (or tacitly demolishing them by pointing out their inane effects). She is kicking FB’s ass. Maybe that is a “cruel neutrality” for which you can confront her, but I do not see her as having succumbed to the poison that FB dispenses.
Um, sometimes a cigar .... :)
Facebook is no longer content to infer your interests from your contacts and postings, they now want to you to self-identify how they can relentlessly inflict themselves upon your life.
Artificial Intelligence is not too intelligent when it comes to Ann Althouse. Anklets!
"I remember when my mother and her friends wore their hair like the old lady in the graphic: a large mound of loops perfectly shaped like a sphere. Every Saturday she would get her hair "fixed" which involved sitting under a dryer for an hour or two. Now she just wears a bob."
Just!
It's talk like that that will send us old ladies to the hairdressers for elaborate maneuvers that are something younger people won't call "just."
The bob is probably the greatest hairstyle ever invented.
Thanks, Owen.
I guess...
Owen, that's fair. But I do think Facebook is a pernicious influence that is harmful and ways known and unknown. And then there's Mark Zuckerberg. I don't want to be any way connected to that guy so I avoid his product. But not everyone feels the same obviously
I started a Nevil Shute email list in 1998.
Interesting. I am in the Neville Shute facebook group. In 2011, I was signed up to go to the meeting in Seattle but ended up in the hospital instead. I wish I could go to the meetings in Australia. Seattle was his favorite place in the US.
I actually am in 2 Facebook groups — both are about the place I lived when I went to high school. I joined them long ago. I considered, just now, joining some other groups. I was especially interested in the one about Wisconsin State Parks, but I considered joining one of the groups about Bob Dylan and one of the groups about anosmia. But the Dylan groups didn't follow the paths of interestingness I want to travel, and the anosmia group required you to request admission and I didn't feel like explaining myself. Actually the Wisconsin State Parks one, the only one I tried to join, requires them to accept you. If I'd realized that, I wouldn't have clicked "join." I don't like asking for acceptance. That's what I like about this blog!
"Owen, that's fair. But I do think Facebook is a pernicious influence that is harmful and ways known and unknown."
The solution isn't to avert your eyes. I want to be able to talk about it. So I like seeing it. I wrote this post to amuse myself not because I was actually confused and intimated!
Anyway, I want to be in Facebook because I like seeing what my high school friends are doing (even when I haven't seen them in 50 years) and because some family members put some things up (especially one of my sons, who essentially blogs there).
Michael,
I suspect that the FaceBook group is what the email list devolved into. There were actually several lists. One was a newsletter that Joost is still publishing. There was one on aviation (Shute was a renowned aeronautical engineer), another on his books, another on his movies, another on his WWII work on secret/special weapons and perhaps a few more.
When I started the original group I called it the Nevil Shute Society but it had no formal existence. Dan Telfair and some others, after the Centennial, formalized it into the officially sanctioned Nevil Shute Foundation.
Any other Norwegians here? As I like to call fans of Nevil Shute Norway.
John Henry
We had some problems with people getting off topic in the various Shute lists. So I started a list called NIOT for nothing is off topic. It started with Norwegians but we wound up with a number of non-Norwegians over the years. Very free-wheeling divese group.
It has been pretty dormant for the past couple years as we lost the critical mass. Still there though along with about 30,000 comments over 20 years.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/NIOT/info
NOW ACCEPTING NEW MEMBERS!
Actually, not "accepting" since anyone can join.
John Henry
Prof. A: I am honored by the call-out. *rolls belly up like a puppy seeking to ingratiate itself**
But more seriously, I get the guarded/probing quality of your stated relationship with FB. It’s a fact, like a superhighway just at the end of your yard. Nobody exactly voted for it, but there it is, and you have to deal with it.
That page, Fernandistein, has a few amusing comments. "I went in this morning to feed her and all I found was tails! I fed the cat 3 times a day while she had her kittens and now she's walking around full of babies in her belly. I'm afraid of her now."
Don't see the images AA has been writing about at Facebook; perhaps because I block some Fb content with FBPurity.
"family members put some things up (especially one of my sons, who essentially blogs there)."
His stuff is reason enough for anyone to be on there.
@Freeman
Thanks!
Ann, you try so hard to find meaning in things that are meaningless.
I finally received a purple banner inviting me to Facebook Groups. Apparently, an un-sexed individual in a hijab playing tennis appeals to me!!
My other choice is a black Baby Huey character sucking down a 40, but also with a tennis racket. I guess it could be a cake cutter.
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