FACEBOOK

At 07:49 PM on Tuesday evening I read these words, and I mean words in the loosest possible sense: “‎:-) and dint even care about beef” in my Facebook feed. The nonsensical, illiterate sentence made by someone I have never met, never heard of and wish never to see was in response to their own moronic status about rating chicken on a “scale of 10-10”. Unfortunately one of my friends had commented on the status which meant that all the banal, unintelligible bollocks that numerous prepubescent fuckwits had spewed out underneath this already abominable status update had found its way into my feed. There were 4 comments on the status and 5 likes. I think, or at least I hope, one of them was offensive. It was difficult to establish thanks to the immensely poor spelling, grammar and limited vocabulary of the writer. 

There was a brief moment in the comments section when I thought the originator had realised her rating scale error. Alas, no. Instead she responded with the statement about her, or someone else’s, lack of interest in beef. I’ve seen it all in context and I am not sure who was ambivalent about beef. 

Up to now my Facebook would restore my faith in human society. With very few exceptions my Facebook friends were made up of family and friends I actually like, admire and respect. The majority of posts would be of peoples’ holiday photos to France and Italy during the summer and skiing pictures during the winter. People checking in to restaurants and village pubs. People expressing their misfortune that it was Monday and they had to go to work but, as they were teachers, engineers, doctors, nurses and designers, it wasn’t really that bad. Increasingly my friends have been posting photos (perhaps in too great a volume and frequency and definitely in too much detail) of their new born baby that they have had with their long term partner. It was my online sanctuary away from the dross of society I meet as soon as I leave my house. That all sound so nauseatingly middle class, but don’t get me wrong my Facebook isn’t like the vomit-inducing, craft obsessed, imaginationless, humourless, saccharine load of regurgitated chaos that is Pinterest; my friends are real people not Martha Stewart without the criminal record.

Now though, Facebook has changed and allows the content of people I don’t know and or like to infiltrate my calm sanctuary like a disease. With each badly spelt word, emoticon and excessive use of exclamation marks I can see the hard work of my family and friends being destroyed. What’s more, I have no control over it. Facebook has engrained itself so deeply in almost everything we do online that, even some of the more private and embarrassing things we get up to online, are splurged all over our friends’ news feeds. It’s not the fault of people who tag or get tagged as ‘the quirky one’ in a vivid, hideous cartoon graphic that supposedly expresses a member of each of their friendship group. It’s not the fault of the creator of all those pointless, vapid ‘memes’ of peoples jobs… you know those ill considered piles of wank that say ‘My Mum thinks I do this’. No. It is Facebook’s fault for thinking that people want to see what strangers are doing on a regular basis.

The consistently bad grammar and other peoples’ “news” cheapens Facebook and moves its aesthetic ever closer towards its unsophisticated, slightly retarded, gossipy, intrusive, exhibitionist brother, MySpace. Constantly being force fed appalling graphics and designs and promoting people you don’t know was MySpace’s raison d’etre and who uses that anymore? All Facebook needs to do is forcefully play music at you like MySpace did and Google+ will explode with all the people actually trying to join up.

Now, you know what to do. Go and ‘like’ us on Facebook before it’s too late. Don’t worry, it won’t just be your friends you annoy with yet another link, to another piece of shit you read on the internet, it will be every one else on Facebook too. Also, watch this space; there will probably be an Idealist Pinterest by the end of the week.