The Escapades of Private Cox & Other Tales: April 2009

Alternative titles I was playing around with were things like "Reasons Why I Hate Facebook", "Some Reasons Why I'm Not on Facebook", and so on. I think you get the picture of where this post is going.

Security, Part 1:

Apparently Facebook is being targeted by naughty boys and girls who like to write malicious software and distribute it using social engineering techniques. This is a minor quibble, since Santa Claus will deal out justice to those people in due course. But I'd rather not have to deal with it in the first place.

Security, Part 2:

I hear that when you first sign up, your profile is available for everyone in the World of Facebook to view. Sure, you can fix this by changing the security setting, but if it announces my full name to the world immediately, without my permission, and without even telling me it was doing it (like it was when I somehow managed to accidentally sign up for Windows Live Spaces or whatever the hell it was), then that can't be a good thing. Ever.

The only thing going for Facebook so far is that you can't sign up accidentally.

At least, I don't think you can.....

Content:

I hear you can sell people and buy people. In the midst of the current financial crisis, this can not be a good investment. Nor can it set a good example. I also hear you can become a vampire and bite people, or some such. Again, not a very good case of example setting, and probably only a good way to meet Twilight fans, of which I am not. I doubt all the other stuff you can do to people is any better if you apply real world logic.

There's also these Facebook Group thingies, the general rule of which seems to be "The name of the group must be at least 60 words long, be super-specific, and sound stupid." And they all sound pointless. The "I secretly want to punch people who walk slowly in the back of the head" group is a prime example, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a "I like to walk backwards for 37 minutes every Saturday morning" group. What's the point? What do these groups actually do? They can't really talk about the subject of their group because they've said most of they need to say in the super-long title. There's only so many other things you can say about walking backwards for 37 minutes every Saturday morning, and the stuff you can say is about as interesting as "Nice weather." (It wouldn't surprise me if there was a "Nice weather" group too.)

And that brings us neatly to the real killer: the conversations that take do place, anywhere in the midst of Facebook. Bob once mentioned his arse in an argument, claimed that it was due to logical progression, and therefore legitimate conversation. If Bob can mention his arse, I do not want to imagine what other people are capable of talking about. Such things should never be written/typed, said, implied, sent via Morse code, signed in any form of sign language, or (God forbid) drawn/photographed. I don't want to ever have to read stuff like that. I'd rather not be reduced to tears, thank you very much.

Reputation:

Let's face it, all social networking sites have had their reputations soiled by several things..... Alright, one thing: MySpace. From the stereotypical people who use it and their ability to torture the English language, to the page layouts that made a trip to the optometrist mandatory, it dominated the social networking scene and adopted a scorched Earth policy at the same time. The social networking landscape will never be the same again.

It's Not Efficient:

Everyone who I want to give out my contact details to already has them. If you've already got them, why do I need to tell you all what they are again? And why do I need to sign up to some service to do that?

And even then, it seems to me that you all only seem to be using it as a glorified messaging service to tell people about your next party. You're still not being efficient because you've still got to tell the people who aren't on Facebook (e.g. Me) by Some Other Means. So why not use that Some Other Means in the first place? Wouldn't that be easier? I mean, I'd still have to sign in to Facebook in order to see all this stuff, whereas if you just emailed me, it's in my Inbox ready to go.

"But Lambie, You Can Have All Those Alerts Emailed To You!"

Oh, so it can spam me with notifications, can it? Brilliant.

I won't ask why you can't just cut out the middle man (or should that be middle face?) and just email everyone, once, with the notification they need. I suspect the answer will dismay me.

You All Seem to Hate It Anyway:

No, really. Every time Facebook is even brought up, it always seems to be about how you all hate it and don't know why you use it. "It crashes my laptop if I leave it open and put the screen down." "I don't want my details spread out to everyone in the world." "I don't care if it's some guy's birthday who I went to high school with. Stop telling me." Sound familiar? All those quotes came from Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2006. (You.)

No one's actually managed to give me a convincing argument as to why I should be using it. All I see and hear is reasons why I shouldn't.