RAVE: Hating Facebook Is So Easy 1

I've just posted on the brilliant Julian Assange and his damning assessment of just how nefarious Facebook really is. Like Sarah Palin, this is one blog that finds hating Facebook so very easy to do.

It's now well over a year since I was a member of that most hideous social networking site, yet my rancour towards it continues afresh, now spurred by Assange calling it the "most appalling spy ever".

I literally ran for my life from Facebook. And, boy, was it difficult to get all my data erased and not be able to freely 'access' my profile even after I had supposedly deleted it. That in itself was a creepy, creepy exercise in how and why to hate Facebook.

Hence, I simply had to post this picture below that I came across, courtesy of sounds-like-me.com. It really says it all.

RAVE: Assange & The Most Appalling Spy

I always grab any opportunity to sit down and listen to Julian Assange. He is always erudite, exacting and entirely on point. For all his many detractors, he continues to be the voice of reason and truth in the midst of all the hogwash and corporatist propaganda masquerading as 'media' and 'news' these days. It wasn't by chance that he (just) beat out the brilliant Max Keiser to be my Man of the Year last year.



In an interview yesterday with Russia Today (RT) regarding his pending (and outrageous) extradition to Sweden and the ever-threatening presence of the United States in his life, he spoke of the media and how the powers that be continue to usurp our truth.

What really caught my attention, however, was how critical Assange was of the Internet and culture phenom that is Facebook. He analysed how much personal information, not to mention other habits, that Facebook had on its files with regard to its hundreds of millions of users. He is convinced that so much information being in the hands of a corporation like Facebook can only be bad, especially given their poor track record to date regarding data disclosure. Very bad.



In fact, he went to so far as to suggest that Facebook could most certainly be a front today for the United States government, possibly even the CIA, and their many, many nefarious and privacy-invading schemes and neuroses. He called Facebook the "most appalling spy ever."

That's correct - there it was writ large on an RT banner at the bottom of the screen: "Assange: Facebook Most Appalling Spy Ever".

I didn't just relish that statement - I positively whooped in glee! All my worst fears as to just just how creepy Facebook had made me feel came rushing to the fore. To have Julian Assange put that putrid organisation into such stark, lucid context was music to my ears. Yes, it's exactly what I wanted to hear, unexpected as it was.

Facebook is everything I loathe about this Internet era - the scummiest downside, its very nadir. It's the pervasive, relentless cheering of the mundane and the petty and the banal, not to mention the very dumbing down of society. It is mental voyeurism that cheapens us all.

And, yes, I do believe it could be a front for much larger, much more sinister machinations by the paranoid powers that be.

Trust Julian Assange to put it out there, and in no uncertain terms. Thank goodness for his voice.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Quit Facebook Day - Hurrah!

Today is May 31st and is being marked by many around the world as 'Quit Facebook Day'. Simply, many users of this (horrible, venal, creepy) online social networking site are shutting down their Facebook accounts in protest over new allegations and proof that Facebook did not fully protect users' personal information in their profiles and, worse still, may have even sold said details to other online entities.

As of this morning, and as according to Russia Today, more than 22 000 people had already pledged to shut down their Facebook accounts in protest.

Hurrah!

I am getting an especially big kick out of this worldwide protest against Facebook given my own quite vociferous anti-Facebook post on this very blog just over a month ago. At the time I ranted at how inane, boring and vapid, even downright creepy, I had found the site in just under three months of use. I had simply hated it. And, yes, there had been something decidedly unnerving about all the incessant rumours going around that Facebook did not protect users' information.

My mother, who seems to become more and more the vocal social activist with each passing day, immediately told me to cancel her Facebook account when I told her about the campaign this morning. She made that perfectly clear - and it had to be today, given the said international protest.

Never one to pass on an opportunity to stick it to the Big Ugly Corporate Man, I seized the opportunity to do just as instructed by my mother. It was with some glee that I went through the process of deactivating her account.

Thanks for that, mom. It was most enjoyable.

However, I use the word 'deactivate' with a big, fat caveat - after all, as I found out to my dismay when deactivating my account last month, one never really deactivates one's account on that despicable little site. That is a most disconcerting realization to have to confront. Especially when one has such a contemptible opinion of the site and cannot wait to be rid of it in one's life.

But, at least for now, I have had the pleasure of yet again giving Facebook just a tiny little middle finger.

And I did so with relish.

NOT the Site of the Day: Facebook

Today I made the joyous decision to deactivate my Facebook account. Joyous because I cannot remember the last time a site has so annoyed me.

I resisted joining Facebook for a long time. It just seemed so trite and I've never had much patience for social networking sites. I tire of them so easily. But people kept telling me to give it a go, so in January of this year I finally did and jumped onto the Facebook bandwagon.

And it took me less than three months to bail the hell off THAT wagon.

So, why my hate for this much-loved (and, as I have also discovered of late, much-reviled) site? Well, some of the MANY reasons why I detested being a Facebooker include:

1. It's The Stepford Wives Online Social Forum! The utterly mundane and piss-boring posts by so many people about things they're doing that I would never, ever, EVER be interested in the first place. It's scary just how mundane most people's lives are - and they have the nerve to think I'd actually be interested! Not to mention the all-out chirpiness of it all. It's all so glib and so relentlessly cheery and...well...creepy.

2. Much Ado About Nothing: For all the talk about what wonderful 'networking' one can do on this site (one of the primary reasons I joined) it's all bloody nonsense. Real networking is so limited. Yes, there are some great organizations with profiles on the site and some good causes that can be spread. But they're almost an afterthought in the mental twilight world that is Facebook. And most people really don't care. For the most part, it's just an excuse for social exhibitionism and voyeurism to run rampant and without threat of prosecution.

3. Oops, There Goes My IQ!: The sheer banality of most of the posts coupled with the ENDLESS silly games that some people play on the site ('Mafia Wars', something about a damn zoo and other such mindless crap) and which one - of course - has to be bombarded with, was astounding. It gave me the distinct impression that, for the very first time in my life and barring a few forgettable social instances, I could actually feel the physiological sensations of myself getting more and more stupid...Absolutely scary.

4. The 'Who-the-Bloody-Hell-Are-You?' Game: Never before have I had so many requests from so many people that I either (a) can barely stand it if they're in the same hemisphere as I or (b) I don't have a cooking clue who they are, to simply be their 'friend'. Friend indeed - back-handed slap is more like it.

5. Is This Communication?: On a more serious note, I sincerely have huge doubts regarding the actual value and quality of the communication one gets in the online hell that is Facebook. For one, I was taken aback at how essentially dumb some of the communication was by people who I (once) thought and assumed were actually smart. It was a genuine shock to me.

For another, me listening to what a person had for breakfast or what their precious child did in the school play or how fabulous they think their God is, and which is broadcast willy-nilly to the entire world, is neither personally gratifying for me nor is it real communication. It's just tedious narcissism, quite frankly.

Put it in an e-mail and communicate with me one on one. Even if it is about your breakfast or your child or your God - I'll be more receptive. At least then it validates me as being a real friend to you, and not just one of your hundreds of Facebook 'friends'.

It's the dumbing down of society.

It's the elevation of being trite and glib to that of being smart - when it is not nor should it ever be.

It's further confirmation of the mindless instant gratification era in which we live.

It is the Big Brother TV show syndrome subliminal to one's social interactions.

It is a limited concept given too much online importance and too much value.

It's for some, and not for others.

For a far more amusing and brilliantly scathing attack on Facebook, please follow this link at the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-ostroy/i-hate-facebook_b_178867.html 

The rant against Facebook by Andy Ostroy, a political analyst in New York City, is seriously funny. And seriously true. It's a fantastic diatribe.

As for me with regard to Facebook, it's a case of over and OUT!

Thank goodness.