Like most people these days, I have a facebook account. I would bet though, that unlike a lot people, I signed up for mine before it was a public site. When I signed up you needed a valid college email address in order to become a member. The general public and even high schoolers were moderately restricted from joining. I say moderately because I suppose one could just fake an email address or use a friends or something along that nature but I digress. Back in the good old days face book was kind of sweet. They had useful features like teacher ratings and the ability to select what classes you had enrolled in for the semester and then the ability to see all other students at your school who had signed up for the same class. A useful feature to see if you knew anyone in your 300+ person class. Another reason face book was better back then was the total lack of the applications that run rampant now.(more on that later)
I didn't get into facebook until a couple years after it was created. The big site at the time was myspace, which I never signed up for because, well its lame. Anyone could have one, even 13 year olds who have no business doing the things on there that they do. They also all look like shit mostly because users could totally customize their own layouts, which might sound cool, but take into account that most people aren't web/graphic designers and what you got was a bunch of unreadable, impossible to look at without having a seizure, pages. Facebook had a regimented layout that was the same for everyone, clean and uncluttered, that actually focused on the person. (gasp I know)
Then came a terrible day. Facebook opened its doors to people with high school emails and shortly there after, every one could sign up. On that day, useful features like teacher ratings and the class list disappeared. Then came the shenanigans. Applications. Some one some where decided it would be a good idea to create/let people create a whole mess of things and be able to add them to your facebook page. If that wasn't bad enough they left the process totally uncensored and unmonitored. Now, it seems that whenever i check my email, I have 5 from facebook saying so and so wants to do such and such to you, click here to find out more. Or if I bypass my email that day and go right to face book, I get notifications there. Its really annoying. Almost as annoying and the "Look at me I'm a self-centered loser with no friends so I have to take this picture by myself" picture pose that half the chics on that site use.
Sorry Eberhart. But in this pic you can clearly see what I'm talking about. The girl on the right of the pic is also the one who took the photo as illustrated by the outstretched arm in the bottom right of the picture. You can also note that she is the only one smiling because the other two persons in the photo were not prepared for the shot. Most likely, the girl on the right, feeling alone and left out, ran over towards these two people she may or may not know and took the picture to make it appear as if she has friends when in reality, she sucks and no body likes her. Its your traditional myspace pose except this one happened to involve some innocent bystanders.
It's almost gotten to be too much. I finally had to delete some of my "friends" because the constant application and other assorted nonsense got to be too much. God forbid if you remove some one from your friends list though. Its like the end of the world or something. People place too much emphasis on trivial shit like that. I suppose I could just delete my whole account, and at this point, I am contemplating doing just that.
On the other hand, maybe I'll just start spotlighting ridiculous pics and quotes from people on there. That sounds like a better idea don't ya think?
