Like many of you, I was on facebook. I have been for some time, probably dating back to 2008. Not really sure. But through waves of virtual friends, who were rarely anything other than strangers with way too much access to my personal life, I found the experience to be less and less rewarding.
Oh sure in the beginning there was the whole check up on exes, old friends, and even a few enemies thing. "Did this jerkwagon get fat?" "Did she really do better than me?" Occasionally, there was even the rekindled friendship that made it seem worthwhile. But anyone who was looking for someone has probably found them at this point, and what was left was the refuse of social media society.
A few years back, I began to notice two things-the rise of the meme, or these incessant pictures and sayings, admonishing you to share (more on this in a little bit) and older, even elderly people joining in the fun. Uh, people like Tootie. This Tootie, is a distant relative of mine, a very nosy busybody type-the kind that would bake you cookies just to see your living room.
Everything you post, she follows, or likes, or comments on. Over time, I began to see that it was the most bored of elderly, therefore the most nosy, that was inundating facebook with constant interjections and inappropriate postings. For whatever reason, older people took to Mark Zuckerberg's college invention.
All the stranger, was that Zuckerberg created this monster of privacy cancer for college students, so we are told. In fact, there was supposed a distinct effort to match up the interface to the constantly changing world young people face. But, still, the older folks came. Boy did they ever.
In the beginning, I would post party pics, or recipes, or general updates. But once Tootie showed up, all of that changed. "Are you drunk in this picture?" Why yes, yes I am. That is why my eyes look like mirrors. "Is this how you live your life?" Oh fuck. Now what? At this point I have a choice, I can edit her out of my postings, a pain in the ass and fairly obvious if you just delete someone from your feed, or delete the family altogether. I chose the latter. So now, I have to go around pretending I gave up my facebook.
Now the memes, those are largely to get likes for pages, which in turn is used to mass advertise for commissions. They are just a more entertaining version of spam, really. But still, annoying. Because people refuse to cultivate any creativity whatsoever, they post these fucking awful things. "Soldiers before illegals, SHARE if you agree!" "What kind of nonsense is that, fuck you," you think. "You morons-what does one have to do with the other? What line item out of $600 billion dollars screws a soldier in lieu of a Mexican desperate to get here and create a nicer life?"
And, in case you have not already figured it out-Tootie, and her ilk, are posting these memes. All. The. Motherfucking. Time. So now I can't start my day without a daily dose of blood pressure raising political garbage, and what happens? I go to work in a mood. Or if it is my day off, and I have a chance to enjoy the sun, and freshly cut grass, instead what is on my mind is "Yes, yes you are a racist for posting that, thank you for playing."
So, anybody with an education, or a brain, seems, SEEMS, (I know I am generalizing some) to be leaving facebook for Twitter. I am still on social media, just Twitter. It seems to be where the activists are, and I can move quickly, block freely, and altogether manage my thoughts, and other feeds much more fluidly. But why? Well, followers are not suggested by mutual friends or relatives, but interest.
Yet even when the odd conservative nutcase tweet happens along, which is rare, I can see that some level of thought, some modicum of free thinking, was utilized to post the 130 characters. I can usually, at least respect that. Besides, if it aggravates me, another tweet comes along quickly enough to not concern myself with it. Facebook feeds, do not auto-update. I have to refresh. And then it is not chronological, but by what facebook thinks I need to see, or what it is trying to sell me.
Many, many times I have missed important, "in the hospital" type of posts in lieu of "Obama is hiding the true cases of Ebola, SHARE if you agree." It is so bad, so toxic, so vile, so utterly irredeemable, that the word SHARE is in and of itself taking on a negative connotation. Facebook news pages are as bad as Yahoo. Illiterate, ranting lunatics going on and on about one conspiracy or another, or outright racism completely uncensored by our so called media.
So those of us who are reasonable, we leave, which I just did. And soon, facebook will find that these older, racist, idiotic, and of course, "wholesome" (what a vomitously hypocritical word) SAHMs, (stay at home moms) are absolutely worthless from a business perspective. They can't pause their paranoia long enough to believe in much of anything, or buy anything, so advertisers will leave.
And where will they go? Twitter. Free thinkers who are open to new ideas and savvy marketing abound there, and are fertile targets for product promotion. The facebook people, will retain their rapidly rotting circle jerk of a platform for as long as people tolerate it, and as long as advertisers can be persuaded of is usefulness. Which I am guessing, as people like me are leaving in droves, won't be long.
SHARE if you agree.