If Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth, Facebook is…

…the most depressing place on Earth.

(Needless to say, I’m not cross-posting this one to Facebook.)

Facebook is a fascinating phenomena. You can, for example, find out what Mini-Me is doing right now.

It is certainly also an amazing tool for finding old schoolmates and even long-lost friends. The “net” that the social network casts out has lead me to some really surprising “finds” of people I thought I’d never, ever hear from again.

The thing is… it’s all rather grim. For every one person who grew up and became mildly interesting, 10 more grew up to be ignorant racists, crystal loonies, ultra-rightwing republicans or worse. I have Facebook “friends” who subscribe to religious beliefs that include listening to snakes talk and glossolalia (More commonly called “speaking in tongues” -in effect, gibbering and making bizarre-assed noises and pretending this power is gifted from god.)

It’s all so depressing. These people had the same education as me, where did the system fail them?

I’m not going to deny that I may have had an advantage in terms of raw brain horse-power. It would be disingenuously for me to deny that I was identified as “gifted” by the time I was three and put in a special school. (Hated it!)

Nonetheless, arrogant and self-important that may have made me as a child, I have still always believed that most people can absorb and use the vast majority of the education that is afforded them.

Facebook proves that premise is horribly, horribly false.

I had a brief exchange with one of my classmates from back in the 70’s. It wasn’t pleasant as I was being given a dressing down for both being (supposedly) a smartass and apparently for being educated. Funny thing was, I wasn’t actually being a smartass. I suspect there was some simmering resentment or hatred towards me that has been there for 30+ years.

I’m going to reproduce the last piece of the exchange because, lest you think I’m exaggerating, I want to document just how depressing some of these people can be.

This has had all names changed, but the spelling and punctuation are exactly as I received them. Can you imagine this is from a 45-year old person and not a second grader?

YOU DONT KNOW ME TO WELL TO SAY THAT . OKAY FOR ONE . AND I REALLY NEVER CARED ABOUT WHAT YOU SAY AND 2I HAD FRIENDS AND I HAVE GOOD CHURCH GOING FRIENDS .AND PAGAN FRIENDS AND FRIENDS THAT PRACTIC WICKA AND YOU DONT KNOW ME THANK GOD .. SO DONT ASUME THAT I WAS A PERSON THAT WAS A PROBELEM .. I THINK THAT YOU NEED TO REFLECT ON BEING A BELIVER OF GOD AND STOP ACTING LIKE YOUR BETTER THAN ANY ONE YOU UNDERSTAND ME .. DONT WRITE TO ME BACAUSE I HAVE NO NEED FOR YOU ANY WAY NON BELIVER

Well, I won’t write back, instead, I’m going to ridicule your English skills just by putting them out there for people to see. (Now I am being an arrogant smartass.)

Ironically, the original discussion was started because this person was slagging off our English teacher back then and I think you can tell that this person might not have learned a lot in that class.

Most tellingly, there was not the slightest reference to religion prior to this message. Apparently, they found out I was an atheist from my profile. It’s amazing how some people can really get their backs up against the wall and attack when they learn you don’t share their… umm… as Richard Dawkins would say, “delusions.”

4 thoughts on “If Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth, Facebook is…”

  1. I was going to respond by the (soon to be outlawed) email to your Facebook message this morning – but this post is the perfect excuse to air some thoughts.

    For some reason I feel very ambivalent towards Facebook. Other social network (Ping, Twitter, Flickr, etc) as soon as I join I’m looking around for people I know/know of to connect with. Facebook I’ve joined twice, and I guess I just don’t quite know…. what it’s for. Friends have noticed I’m friends with friends on there and my network has grown a little – and don’t get me wrong, I do genuinely like all my friends on there! But I haven’t gone out actively adding people I know, and I haven’t added much besides a few recycled tweets, and photos that I know people would prefer I didn’t share too widely (though I think friends are getting more relaxed about this, too). I’m moving more and more towards just making everything public, and using lists for specific private communications and sharing.

    I’m really looking forward to exploring Diaspora, I think it may suit the way I want to “network” with people much better – providing of course, that those people are on there with me!

  2. FaceBook has lots of things that disturb me.

    I don’t even like the use of the word “friends” – it obviously shows whoever designed this was outgoing. I’ve always preferred one or two close friends rather than a large “circle of friends” and so, even a “friend request” has loaded connotations. I actually dislike making “friend requests” to people and associates I know if I don’t think of them as “people I’d have round to my house”

    But that’s how the game is played on FaceBook.

    I’m also looking forward to Diaspora, I hope they get it right. Some IT worker friends of mine sat down one day in front of a white board and tried to puzzle out what could improve FaceBook. What we came up with was essentially a “Venn Diagram” model of social circles, in which your points of contact exist in one of more (possibly) overlapping groups.

    It’s really solid as a metaphor for a person’s network, but the devil is in figuring out how to manage that (I think a graphical Venn diagram might work) and how to coordinate your messages/status updates/etc (thats much harder to do in a nice, simple way.)

    I believe you tweeted a video from Google labs sometime back discussing their rethink of the friends metaphor, and they pretty much nailed our model on the head.

    I only hope Diaspora, or somebody else, can implement it in a way that the masses can grasp easily and use. Otherwise it will just be too complex and fall by the wayside.

  3. I entirely agree with you about Facebook and the way it uses language. I’m sure it’s off-putting to many, and it certainly distorts meaning, to insist that your network is of “friends” or that if a piece of content is notable you “like” it. To follow (which isn’t quite the same, but also to “invite into your network” as IBM put it in Connections, which is) seems far less loaded; equally to tweet or bookmark something doesn’t mean you like it. Offering sympathy, sharing outrage, feeling jealous, are all reduced to “liking”.

    I think the Venn diagram model is a nice simple way to conceptualise the distinct but overlapping networks we’re hoping Diaspora will provide. The interface is going to be critical, but the value of the feature is easily appreciated I think. Chatting to my dad, an arch-Facebook sceptic, he immediately commented on the utility of distinct networks. Privacy and networking on Facebook are intrinsically linked but notoriously hard to manage; if Diaspora is successful it will present a model which results in meaningful and purposeful connections (albeit with the serendipitous benefits that social media invariably bring). I would expect that to make it less likely you’d be vilified as a NON-BELIVER (unless, of course, you want to be!)

    I guess we’ll know a lot more about Diaspora in a couple of days!

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