Facebook: The Gods' Gift to Humanity

     I want to try something different for this post. I am so prone to write cryptic, serious posts that have a message that I want to get across and forget that there is more to life than that. What I want to do is some actual literary trash that means nothing but giving some entertainment. So, here goes. Imma gonna give it a shot!

     Facebook, the social network that isn’t very social will be the topic. Come on, you know you’re addicted to it. You get up in the morning thinking, “Damn it! I’m late for Facebook.” We all go through it, even yours truly. I get up and immediately check my FB for new comments from friends and people I don’t even know. Then I check my email to see if FB sent me anything that I didn’t catch on the newsfeed. Pathetic isn’t it?

     I saw a post not too long ago that asked this question: If someone from the 1950s was to suddenly appear today, what would be the hardest thing to explain? The answer: I have a device, in my pocket, that I can access the whole of human knowledge and I use it to look up pictures of cats and argue with people I don’t know. HOW TRUE THAT IS! I, myself, don’t look up pictures of cats.

     You may ask why I said that FB is not very social. I got a message from them a while back that said that I had tried to add people I didn’t know as friends so I was blocked, for a week, from adding people. A social network that denies people the act of being social. Wow! Really? How can I be social if I don’t add friends?

     I don’t know why they did that. I haven’t tried to add anyone for months. My daughter told me that it was probably from someone that I had sent a request to long ago that denied even knowing me. That was probably a family member that would prefer not to claim me. I don’t try to add people I don’t know personally, but will add them if they send me a request. Funny how that works….

     I get all the gossip I need on Facebook. I find out things about my friends that I wouldn’t even guess at. I see people get together, break up, get with someone else then break up with them, all on Facebook. Some people should just keep their relationship status as: Its’ Complicated instead of changing it every other day from In a Relationship to Single and then back. It would save a lot of time.

     I also find out interesting facts about people’s personal lives; like some people like cats while others like dogs and there are those that hate broccoli. All of this posted as their status. Oh, yeah, and then there are those statuses that make no sense whatsoever. You’ve read them, I know you have. You may even have posted one. Things like: ‘STFU…’ or ‘U b a ho,’ or maybe ‘u no who u r an i gonna kill u.’

     The thing that I like the best is that when people post things on Facebook grammar and spelling don’t matter to them. It’s like they totally forgot everything their English teacher taught them. Punctuation doesn’t exist and it takes a two year old to understand the ‘simplification of words’ into some form of code that only pure FB geeks can understand. Those of us that are ‘older’ are even doing it more and more. Mrs. K would be appalled at what is written on FB most of the time.

     Then there are the cats. Kitteh this and cat that. Cute kittens and ugly cats, cats in weird positions with captions that make it humorous, cats being human in the way they are dressed and the accoutrements they have. Wow… I didn’t realize that there were so many people that loved cats so much. (I like dogs, myself.) Post after post after post of cats and kittens in all sorts of situations doing things no honest cat would even consider. I know the few cats that I have had in my life would rather die a horrible, painful death than be put in some of those pictures.

     You have the motorcycle lovers, horse lovers, cowboy lovers, tattoo lovers, big boobs, boys, girls, emo, alternative, gay and lesbian, Conservatives and Liberals, those into politics and those that couldn’t care less, all within the ‘social community’ of Facebook. If there is something out there in the world that is of interest to even one person on the planet, you can find it on Facebook and it will be posted as a status for the world to see, unless you have your profile set to ‘Private.’ Then only the people you want to see you can.

     My profile is open to the public, after all, I am not hiding from anyone and I really don’t care who sees it. I understand when an underage person (child for those of you from Chariton) that isn’t really old enough to have a Facebook profile anyway puts theirs to Private. We wouldn’t want any unsolicited pervert contacting you at all, even though you should be old enough to know not to trust anyone online if you are old enough to put your life out there on a ‘social network.’ Isn’t that what ‘socializing’ is? Getting to know people that you didn’t know previously?

     To be honest, and I try to be, I don’t know but about a quarter of the people I have has friends personally. I have become ‘online’ friends with several people from around the country and the world but have never met them in person. That is the great thing about the internet; you can meet people from anywhere. Isn’t that what a ‘social network’ is for? Facebook thinks you have to know the person to add them as friends. Yep, the ‘social network’ that isn’t very sociable because you have to know them before you add them.

     I guess I can stop now. I have made a lot of comments, both good and bad, about a site I use daily. With all the humor, arguments, relationship changes, totally useless things and information that is posted on Facebook it is probably one of the most entertaining sites I have found. Keep it up Facebookers. In a hundred years people will look back at this and laugh at how idiotic we all were back in the early 21^st Century that we had to tell the world every little aspect of our lives no matter how trivial or how important. Thank the gods of Valhalla there is a place we can go to voice our little opinions to a world that doesn’t care. Viva la Facebook!