I remember when I was in grade twelve there was this site on the world wide web called MySpace and it was the coolest thing ever. You got to have your very own personal little page and you could deck it out with a cool background and have music playing and even let the whole world know who were the most important people in your life by arranging them strategically on your top friends. Man, it was sweet. Or you could give someone a big fat figurative middle finger by demoting them off your top friends list. So it was intense too. And you could also tell the world you were going out with someone by making them your number one friend. So yeah, it was pretty excellent and the whole thing operated quite well through unwritten actions.
Then when spring time of 2007 rolled around this other web site began to gain some popularity among my friends. It was the Facebook and it was pretty nifty. It was a heck of a lot more interactive than MySpace and was soon what all the cool kids were using. You could post pictures, write a message on someone's wall so everyone could see how tight you two were, write a secret message to someone that only the two of you could see, poke people, send them gifts, let everyone know you were taken - the possibilities were endless. I especially loved the Facebook because an older boy would message me on it. He was in college and I was in grade twelve, so yeah, I was a big deal.
When I think back to those golden days of the Facebook and how simple and carefree it was I can't help but feel like it's been ruined. And I know who the culprits are: adults. Adults have ruined Facebook.
Allow me to explain. First came the games. Adults invented games that could be played on the Facebook. You'd sign in and be excited to see you had half a dozen new notifications only to discover that they were invitations from the same two people to play a bunch of different games. Thanks for nothing, *Chad, thanks for nothing (* names have been changed to protect the guilty). And if you ever did take the plunge into the world of Facebook gaming, you soon realized that guilty Chad didn't actually care enough to send you a genuine invitation to play this super fun game, he just wanted you to join the madness so he could get 20 more coins of fake money for his game. So not only was Chad guilty, he was also using you to benefit his imaginary farm. So you can thank the adults that made the stupid games and Chad for sending you self-serving invitations for getting excited over nothing.
I believe what came next to Facebook was the prostitution of the sidebar area. Adults decided that the space on the sides of the screen would be excellent for trying to sell you stuff. And it didn't stop at that. Adults started creating Facebook accounts for their businesses so that you could "like" them and thereby let all your friends know that you pledge allegiance to Walmart. Heck, you can't even read the back of a box of cereal without General Mills now telling you to "like" them on Facebook. All of these companies want lots of likes. In fact, they'll trick you into liking them by saying they'll give you stuff or enter you in a draw for a really great prize that you'll never, ever win. It wasn't like you were already getting enough advertising in your life. Obviously you wanted more advertising to explode in your face when you got a second of free time to see if Bill and Sara were still dating because you heard they got in a fight. And it totally doesn't annoy you when you accidentally click on an add on your newsfeed. Don't even get me started on long lost friends expressing an interest in your life all the sudden. We all know they had evil business type ulterior motives.
Next came the memes. Adults figured that Facebook would be a great place to jump on the pop culture bandwagon and then proceed to beat the dead horse pulling it. Know what a "minion" is? Ever read something telling you to "keep calm?"
Well now you have. And those are minions. And that, my friend, is a meme. Sure, that one might be cute, but imagine that same "keep calm" phrase or those same minions tweaked ever so slightly into a thousand different memes and then shared more times than you can count. It gets old really fast. And scrolling through all of them on your newsfeed becomes quite a chore.
Lastly, what absolutely irks me the most about adults on Facebook is their undying need to spew their opinion about everything under the sun, as if what they have to say actually matters and that people care what they think. Something everyone needs to realize is that with the invention of the internet and social media, sharing information has become exponentially easier. And since it's so easy to share what you have to say, there are literally billions of different things people have to say being sent out into the oblivion of the world wide web. This means the supply of unsolicited opinions FAR outweighs the demand. Therefore, what you have to say literally means nothing if you choose to voice it on the internet. Sure, there are ways for your voice to mean a little more, but that requires credentials, years of experience, endorsement from other meaningful sources, and sometimes a big crowd of followers also gives your voice a little more volume. Most adults don't seem to realize this. So they shout out from their statuses and cat-call in the comments what they have to say on any controversial topic. And it accomplishes about this much:
And it doesn't stop there. Next someone will come along with a polar opposite opinion and feel the urge to voice it. This triggers an incredibly ugly landslide effect. Although they are adults, rarely are they able to debate in a mature manner. Grown men and women stoop to the level of name calling and condescension commonly seen among middle schoolers. I'm not quite sure what they're trying to accomplish when they call a stranger an "idiot" or tell them they are wrong and have no idea what they're talking about. Perhaps they're hoping everyone else on the thread will be super impressed by their juvenile stabs -
Or maybe they simply want to reduce their opponent into tears.
Whatever their intentions are, I'll admit I can't look away. I keep coming back for more. This week alone I've spent an embarrassing amount of time scrambling back to the Facebook so I could see what the grownups were saying to each other.
Oh how the Facebook has changed. I miss the good old days when it was a kids thing and wasn't polluted with all this adult stuff. Why did the adults have to come along and ruin such a good thing? Gosh, those adults, they're ...
Glad I'm not one of them. I'm only 27. And I've only been married three and a half years. Sure, I have two kids, but ... Holy crap. Wait a minute. When did that happen?! I could have sworn I was still in high school. I still feel like a kid. There's no way I'm an adult! No, no way. There can't be, because that would mean that ... that I'm probably guilty of all of these things ... that I'm probably ruining the Facebook too. NOOOooooooo!!!
