Facebook Farce – Part One

Let’s face it, Facebook is on the verge of extinction. It’s gone down the same route as Friendster and totally messed up the home page. Finding status updates and things that people are actually interested in among the mess of fan pages and groups is becoming a tiring daily practice and more and more people are complaining about it. I recently got banned from Facebook for celebrity impersonation despite not having been involved in such a practice. It’s just a complete mess.

So without further ado, a list of reasons as to why it should die!

1. Layout. In the same way millions are complaining about the new YouTube layout, millions groan and gripe at the very first mention of a Facebook layout update. In the two years that I used Facebook there were at least five such updates. Each one of them got closer and closer to having an information overload on the homepage. And each time the layout changed at least 100 groups appeared demanding that Facebook change it back. But to no avail.
2. Notifications. Commenting, liking, tagging, inviting, poking… there’s just a constant tidal wave of notifications flying into your head. Facebook has actually been reported as a source of stress in people’s lives from the never-ending mess of notifications. It gets even worse if you’ve got email notifications turned on. I remember logging into Googlemail, staring at the (500+) email count and suddenly coming to the realization that practically all of them were Facebook.
3. Chat. The chat client in Facebook is a complete and utter mess. It crashes every few minutes and has strict limitations to how much you can use it. I can never chat on there for too long without going mad. It’s the worst programming I’ve seen in a while.
4. Racism. A recent influx of groups and fanpages regarding turbans has led to a massive increase of racism in schools. I myself have heard reports of racism against a boy in my own school due to the sole fact that he was wearing a turban. Some fanpages appear to be perfectly innocent but when you join you’ll see a whole other side to them. While I was a member of Facebook I joined a group about COD and soon I saw the administrator sharing really racist statuses!
5. Viruses. If you’re a Facebook user it’s likely that you’ve seen or at least heard of the groups which ask you to become a fan and do a survey on a third-party website before you can see a supposedly funny picture. Little do most people know that these external websites commonly carry viruses which will automatically be downloaded and run on your system without you even knowing about them.

That’s the end of part one.

Tune in soon for even more reasons why Facebook should give up the ghost.

Peace,

Steve :)

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