Facebook Folly

"I know you better than you know yourself," Christof, told Truman

I detest social networking sites like facebook with a passion. Social networking is biggest intelligence gathering project ever invented and it is successful because it's creators know that people are capable of great vanity and mass stupidity. Nintety five percent of people don't know what the hell they are doing when they go online and they are leaving themselves open to all sorts of intrusions such as ridicule, bullying and even crime. Imagine getting home and finding your house has been tanned because some crim could tell from the mobile phone geo-tagging service at Foursquare that you were out of town. Or try imagining what it's like being a 13 year old kid going through a hard time when you start getting anonymous texts and messages on sites like facebook telling you that you are dead. Frightening isn't it? Seriously, social networking and technology can be bad for your mental health and the evidence proves that more people are losing the plot completely. Adults used to slag teenagers for being playstation slaves but now the adults are getting just as hooked. Welcome to the matrix folks

Social networking is the online version of Big Brother and it turns some people into morons. How else do you explain 30,000 people paying tribute to that psychotic cop killer from Cumbria? Does this tell us what people are really like under the thin shiny veneer? Like an old song once said, there are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder. Before facebook we could only guess at the state of people's minds but now that we have X-Ray eyes we can say for sure that a sizeable percentage of the population is in need of deep therapy. I bet the internet has been a godsend to shrinks and anyone else who is looking for an explanation as to why so many people in this day and age are seemingly screwed up and totally confoozed

There are a few things you should know about Facebook and I have it on good authority that everything said in this article will resonate with some people. I know that I am not the only person in the world who hates facebook and that those of us who refuse to be manipulated are in the minority. I dont believe in playing by the usual rules such as jumping on the latest bandwaggon or writing articles to some formula that is supposed to work online. Feck that. I prefer to do things my own way and attempt to say what I mean rather than just tell people what they want to hear. Those who blindly follow the flock are never followed and in this mono culture originality is hard to find. I don't personally care about online popularity because I do not think it is a smart idea to put a lot of our personal info and thoughts on a website for the world to see. It might come back and bite you some day

In one month 45,000 users quit facebook over privacy concerns. Some people have finally caught on that the CIA and Feds are involved with Facebook and the penny has dropped. Facebook is a social experiment funded by some strange and extremely right wing people who are pretty smart when it comes to centralised control and information gathering yet most people think that this is alright as long as they have nothing to hide. This is the usual excuse given for population surveillance and it is an old chestnut which the British Government wheels out whenever they get asked why they have such a fetish for CCTV cameras and personal identity cards

The facebook tagline "helps you connect and share with the people in your life - is a clue that should warn you to have nothing to do with it. Why the hell would you want everyone to know what you are up to? To illustrate the dangers let me quickly relate a story regarding an acquaintance

A friend of a friend works in the public sector and is a too independently minded for the nasty little cliques in her workplace. At every break they all sit in the canteen talking about what they did on Facebook and relating stories about what their 'friends' have been up to. Facebook is a gossips paradise and the last thing you would want to do after work is sit at a pc to find out about what all your workmates are doing. You see enough of them already

Because she is not on Facebook she is looked on as some kind of social pariah and they think she is not normal. As a result she is not one of the crowd and is treated with disdain just because she refuses to join Facebook. That is pretty nasty in my opinion and proves that going against the flow is hard for an individual when there is so much pressure to conform. If I was a conformist I would have probably bought a house on my arrival in Ireland and been choked with debt now but thankfully I didn't conform and as a result I don't have debts to worry about now. Almost everyone else does though

You can hardly go a single day without hearing the word facebook and it makes me glad I live in a quiet place far away from the city where I can remain as unplugged as possible and not have to listen to people talking shite all day long about facebook and the latest iPhones. It bores the pants off me and makes me want to reach for the bucket. I refuse to have anything to do with what now stands for popular culture because I find it empty and soul destroying. I feel sorry for people who don't remember the 70s and who don't know what is like to spend a childhood summer running around all day long playing football and kick the can with their little mates instead of being sucked into a black hole of banality where they can live as fictional characters in some virtual other world. Get a life guys for christ sake

I saw someone on Facebook (I was on it myself for a little while) who is a Billy no mates in real life and he had over 900 friends! Absolutely no way. I know this guy and he is the most annoying twat on the planet but hey he has become a "center of influence" in something like trainspotting or blow up doll collecting. The illusion is staggering and if you want to be sold a pup then sign up for facebook and give it loads o' lashes. It even gets on the evening news and apparently in one in five divorce cases in England facebook was mentioned as being a contributing factor in support of the plaintiff. That. is. what. I. mean. about letting everyone know what fuck you are up to. Facebook is also a cattle market and that is why it is sometimes known as fcukbook

Welcome to the world of the future where people become less connected with real friends, if they had any to start with in the first place, and become prisoners behind a computer screen living a hellish life riddled with paranoia, self-doubt and far too much self importance. A world where partners can't trust each another any more because they know that the other is online and not quite sure what they are up to. It is all very sad. I am sure if Hemmingway was around in this day and age he would have lost faith even sooner than at the age of 61

After joining Facebook I got hounded by some Indian guy who collects HVI's - High Value Individuals, whatever the hell they are. He even got my email address and started pestering me on msn so I booted him. I listened to him for about 5 minutes out of courtesy and thought "righty ho you are out of here pal". Not "you are so out of here" like some pretentious south Dublin prick with a mid-atlantic accent would say but just plain "yer outta here!", "feck off!!".

These pains in the hole are everywhere online and they are like clones of some strange race who have been given too much electric shock treatment and brainwashed with the notion that everyone and their granny wants to listen to the goings on in their boring lives. "You can keep in touch with old friends" - yes they are old friends for a reason you idiot

Next time I get accosted by someone like this I will say I am on the dole and live from day to day. That ought to be enough to send them packing. This is we used you do with Jehovies or those mormons when they come to the door - "sorry pal, I am a devout catholic" and they soon leave you be. The know that catholics are even more brain damaged than themselves and they are not for turning. Even if you have not been to a chapel for donkeys years it works like a charm.

These people who pester us online even have their own coded language and give out tips to each other for collecting people to pester online. They even write up lists on how to be popular and to get people to have time for you. What they forget is that some of us are not into popularity and couldn't give a shit one way or the other and if we wanted a conversation we will go to proper places for a real one, like down the boozers with our mates. Mates - you know, guys you have the craic with?

The main reason the guy got my contact details was that when I joined shitbook I didn't have a clue what it was. Privacy was the last thing I worried about but after my shitbook experience privacy it is the very first when I join a new site. I couldn't use it because unlike most normal web designers these pricks have to be smart and confuse the hell out of you with something that looks like it is half ecommerce site and half something else. It has the worst user interface I've ever seen and just by looking at it tells me they dont give a damn about good user interface design or their users

But the ads are placed in all the right spots and they made sure they got that bit right. They really are shallow people. It takes ages to learn and is way too complicated for something that should be extremely simple. Those trashy ads that are pushed into your face on the sidebar show that these guys have no class whatsoever and that fb is just another marketing channel with nothing on but mind numbing mediocrity and blandness

Before I head off to have a conversation with a real person I leave you with some fb and general blogging tips that might help you become popular. Of course if you are using social networking for business reasons then that is a different matter altogether and one that proves that you are pretty smart. Bon chance.

Get Personal

Good articles reveal something interesting about the author and create a sense of intimacy

Short and Sweet

The average web surfer has the attention span of a fly so you need to keep it brief and simple

One Topic per Article

Keep it on topic. Otherwise you might confuse the hell out of them

Short Articles Ending With A Question

A brief rant ending with a question causes many people to respond. If the author wanted an answer to his question why not just ask google or make up their own mind for christ sakes. This is classic attention seeking behaviour which you might want to try if you are lonely and want to be popular

Tagging

This one is seriously dodgy. Some dude gets a kicking from his girlfriend because she saw a picture of him on fb hoovering the lips off a woman at a party. Someone tags his pic and now everyone in his network thinks he has shacked up with a new bird. The only problem is that his girlfriend is the last person to know about it. Poor girl. The moral - watch your levels of alcohol consumption in public

Timing

If you are looking for a scoop the best time to post on fb is during the week because that is when everyone is bored shitless. At the weekend most people are out getting a life or having coffee with someone they met on fb

Commenting On Your Own Notes

Commenting on your own notes is the way to make people think you are sociable and helpful as opposed to being a self indulgent twat. Being a self indulgent twat and commenting on your own notes is known as "adding value" to your posts. If you are happy to respond to morons who write "Wow!!! thank you soooo much for sharing" then good luck to you

The Call To Action

Flog em something but have a bit of class. Even better, make them think it was their idea all along

Final thoughts

If you believe in the wisdom of crowds then fine just follow the flock. They got it wrong about capitalism and just about everything else. No-one trusts anyone any more and you should not believe all you read and hear online :-) The question to ask in response to the crap we are bombarded with all day is this: "who is kidding who here and what is their motive". Take care out there