I will not join your facebook group. Nor will I play virtual scrabble with you or pay $1 to facebook.com to send you an image of a cup of a panda as a virtual “Gift.”
I admit that I do have a facebook account, but I would like to add that, in spite of this, I am not, in fact, a loser. Since I signed up, I have received thousands (or at least tens) of invitations to groups dedicated to worthy causes. Save Darfur. Stop AIDS. Cure cancer. NAMBLA*. But I never accepted a single one. I felt no need to publicly declare my acts of philanthropy.
But some people seem to have an incessant need to add applications that organize a list of favorite “causes” such as the number one most downloaded application, “Causes,” which 52 of my current Facebook Friends have. Joining groups and applications, however, does nothing to actually feed the starving children of Haiti. The rainforest in the Amazon doesn’t care if you “accepted an invitation.” The starving children don’t really give a crap, either.
But the “Causes” application is not, in my opinion, the most egregious to grace the network’s pages. The worst facebook application has got to be “Top Friends,” among the top five most popularly downloaded additions to one’s profile.
The premise behind this application is that is allows the user to select a large group of friends who are his favorite and share this list and accompanying photographs with the world. The thing is, that I find this to be completely pointless. Even more pointless than “Causes.” You won’t be any “less friends” with someone if your friendship is not made known to everyone who views your profile. Thank you, “Top Friends,” for creating gaudy, flashing backgrounds that looked as though they’ve been ripped from an eighth grader’s geocities website. You really can’t help but look. And then cringe in response to the sparkling lights that threaten to give you a seizure.
“Top Friends” is ugly. It is a huge design flaw. It is the pimple of facebook. People who do not know that potentially life-threatening animated gifs are not (and were never) in vogue should not have control over designing part of a website to be viewed by other people.
I don’t know why anyone would want to bring the worst of myspace.com, the worst of social networking sites, to facebook, which may not be the pillar of the community, but, hey, at least it’s not myspace. Read the rest of this entry »
