Thursday

Regarding Facebook

An actual exchange on a local online message board (names have been changed to protect the innocent and sharp edges have been dulled):

Marvin: From what little experience I've had with Facebook, I figured that it's where women find out what happened last night on Dancing with the Stars/American Idol/The Bachelor/Oprah/any liberal bull**** that takes 1/4 of a monkey brain to absorb

My response: I have mixed feelings about Facebook. I couldn't condense my thoughts here, but I will respond to Marvin:

Marvin: You give Facebook too much credit. It isn't even that deep. There's a "news feed" that I access about three or four times a week. It's actually pretty cool (on the iPad Flipboard, the news feed is laid out like an online magazine, which makes it even better). On the news feed, people post miscellaneous things. I typically post things that I hope people will find interesting or will help someone else (e.g., I mentioned that Miller's had "Throwback Mountain Dew" on sale; I figured it'd help Miller's and people who like pure sugar MD would appreciate it). Too often, though, the news feed is filled with incredibly banal stuff. Actual examples: "Baking cookies!" "Playing Yahtzee!" "Basketball game tonight!" "Taking a dump!" Alright, I made up that last one, but the other three are real.

I'm the first one to admit that I sometimes post uninteresting stuff to my blog or this site, but hey, at least I'm trying to say something that an outside observer might find interesting. Too often, Facebook is merely digital reproduction of whatever is subjectively important to a person at a particular moment. And in that, it gets tiresome fast.

Picture of the Week