The Complainer: Facebook

I know what you're thinking, but no, I'm not actually complaining about the "new" Facebook. In this very special entry of The Complainer, I'd like to complain about people who are themselves complaining. Ironic, you say?? Maybe.

What it boils down to is this: Facebook was and is a free social networking site that you have no right to complain about because you don't pay anything for it and anyway why do you care??. Originally Facebook was only for colleges, but it quickly allowed everyone in, which eventually just made it like every other social networking site in history: that is to say, it's a pointless gathering place where the signal-to-noise ratio is very wrong. Genuine discourse and re-connecting with old friends/classmates/co-workers is constantly overridden by the posting of useless polls, endless creation of groups for Internet memes/every lame in-joke you and your friends have, and completely shallow attempts to rekindle friendships or keep in touch.

As the ease of communication over the past 100 years has increased, the content of said communication has become watered down until you get something like Twitter, where every event of our lives can be cataloged and broadcast to tens, hundreds, thousands, and millions of people. I like some people enough to want to talk to them every day, which is a huge compliment because I am a self centered jerk, but I don't need to know what they were doing at 2:46 P.M. yesterday. I'm sure that sandwich was very good but unless you are going to bring me one so I, too, can experience it, I don't know why I should care.

So it all seems faintly ridiculous to me that people are bitching about the "new" Facebook. Apparently it has occurred to no one that Facebook is the same damn thing you get on every other social networking site, and instead of bristling over its new facade you should ask yourself why you care so much about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is so trivial. In the end, it's all a way of wasting time you should spend doing other things, like, I dunno, reading, doing homework, exercizing, getting drunk, listening to music, posting angry screeds on your blog, etc.

p.s. If Facebook is the only way you are able to keep up with the aforementioned lapsed friends, ex-co-workers, and ex-classmates, then they probably don't mean enough to you to be worth the trouble in the first place.