The Almighty Facebook

First of all let me start this entry with a big hello to all you readers that – like me – have made it through the supposed 21/5/11 Judgement Day and Rapture. Honestly, could anyone really survive without this blog? Yeah I didn’t think so...

And now – onwards!

So.

Has anyone else noticed how creepy Facebook is becoming? I mean the whole thing is pretty odd how we each feel the need to update personal information and physical evidence of our lives to one another but it’s getting worse.

I’ve never been a huge fan... I mean I was forced into using the system by a friend who will remain nameless and since then I’ve lazily browsed this site for the past few years. I’m not one to update my profile picture every few days (or ever actually) and put up albums upon albums of photos constantly searching for comments from others – no. I am, as I said, a pretty lazy user. I admit it is good for sharing photos. Like when you go to a party and there are, like, 12 different cameras being passed from drunken hand to drunken hand and you really want that one picture of yourself jumping off the roof and swinging around on the clothesline hoping it will capture you in the process of turning back time – well Facebook provides. You no longer have to annoy every witness of this feat but just wait til that little red number comes up on the screen stating that someone has uploaded and tagged you in this act of stupidity. Brilliant.

First the site was fine. It seemed pretty normal. Not creepy and stalkerish at all. Gradually, bit by bit, the site has been tracking our movements and creating carbon copies of us in this virtual world so soon we will be rendered redundant by this technological god and forced into the dark and binary-like recesses of a miserable apocalypse. Wow, I started this out with a crackpot apocalypse theory and now I’m making my own – huh monkey see, monkey do.  

Anywho the site started getting annoying when it became bombarded with advertisements. Yes, we are use to these as avid internet surfing junkies but these were detecting our likes and dislikes and showing us ads accordingly. I mean if I said to someone that I really enjoyed drinking litres of juice without a doubt the next refresh would show an ad for “the best juice in town! Click here to know more”. What if I typed in something really crazy like “Man, I just found out that I totally love rubbing old rotting garbage over my naked body whilst watching monkeys at the zoo picking bugs out of their nostrils”? Then what? What you gonna say to that, Facebook? I shudder to think...

The next creepy thing – and this is the clincher – that I recently discovered was when I went to upload a bunch of photos (took me a while... I can tell you – I felt like an old person feels when they leave their front porch – tired and confused). Facebook then asked me to begin the laborious process of tagging each individual person in every photo only to stop me in my tracks. Facebook can now detect what you look like. Facebook had identified my face in most of the photos. Well in some of the photos – I mean if I was pulling a hilarious face... or just smiling for that matter... it needed more confirmation. At least it didn’t confuse my face with a toilet or a farm animal or something (yes I photograph a variety of objects – I don’t discriminate). The fact of the matter is Facebook is slowly gathering information on all of us and using it to further itself. I get that it’s a business and it wants to make money but holy smokes it’s trying to steal our identities! Remember that EVERYTHING you post is tracked and kept. Nothing goes away. So if you don’t want Facebook to know that you have herpes that don’t tell it (no idea why you’d want anyone else to know but you get the drift) – not even in private messages. Also the act of tagging where you are at any one time – stop taking the fun out of stalking.

In summary, we should all just start doing random and out of character things, posting weird entries (mostly about lima beans and wake boarding) and actually tagging our faces as strange stuff to confuse the all-knowing, all-powerful overlord that is Facebook.

Responsi-wha?

Since when did getting older mean that we have to behave like adults? I realise that sounds like a rhetorical statement but seriously – who started this crappy rule?

When did it become not okay to cry at the dentist’s office or skip merrily down the road just because you felt like it?

I turn 22 this year and it is just confirming how terrifying it is to be older and more responsible. “Responsible”. What does that really mean? Well according to my primary school dictionary it is defined as “1. Answerable or accountable, especially for something within one’s power, control, or management” and it comes right after rabbit but before steamroller – sweet dictionary I KNOW. Did you ever find in primary school that if you couldn’t spell a word your teacher would tell you to look it up? What’s with that? I mean if you can’t spell the word how the hell are you meant to find it?? Mark it against all the words you do know and work backwards? Well at least I learnt how to read and write in school so here we are... Now where was I? Oh yes. Being responsible – or rather not being very responsible in terms of clarity in this blog...

So – responsibility. Taking control and managing my actions... well what has that got to do with fighting the urge to bellow “Eye of the Tiger” on the bus? I take full control of that... the volume, the delivery and its general brilliance.

Why have retained a Victorian standard of public and social living? This hushed up-avoiding eye contact with a bad situation? Who hasn’t avoided staring at a public brawl between a man and woman who get heated and start shouting about their waning sex lives and inability to re-tile their bathroom? You avoid it but really, really want to gawp. The only reason we don’t is because a) it’s rather inappropriate and b) because we don’t want these crazies getting all up in our grills.

It seems weird though... I don’t know... I think it’s warranted to throw a big tantrum like any normal child would when the video store is out of “Avatar”. Or when your significant other asks you do to the washing up... It’s better than bottling it up and then finally exploding at them in a public place. Like your wedding.

That reminds me... so there are these life-size concrete cassowaries (big blue emu/ostrich birds – look it up) at a service station near us and one day there was this dad with his three little kids having lunch. Well two of them were having lunch... the other one was doing this...

He was having the time of his life... it was awesome. Heck after seeing him do it – I wanted to do it!

Maybe the moral of the story is to do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t involve aggression...Or maybe that you should be able to do whatever you want as long as I find it amusing.