Facebook is Fucking Stupid.

A venue with which you can broadcast your thoughts is a powerful thing. Historically, the means of broadcasting thoughts and/or ideas have been controlled by the Government and (lack of) technology.

HAM radios require a license, You have to have a television or radio station to broadcast (and the FCC to regulate the content). Billboards are subject to local regulations for placement and content.

Enter the internet. Assholes, such as myself, have the ability to write and say whatever they want. The ability to broadcast video/audio/text is just a trip to Fry's away. In the beginning of the WWW, it still took some doing to get a website up.

When I started this site ten years ago, I had to learn what FTP was (I hated computers at the time, so this was a really painful exercise), I had to learn hyperlinks and basic HTML, I had to buy a domain name ($72 a year at the time, versus $5 or so today). This barrier made it so that people really needed to want to get their message out (in my case, I just wanted to publish my awesome articles that got bounced by the college newspaper).

Now there's Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger (which I've resorted to for this site), and a myriad of other services dedicated to making it easier to get your message out. You don't have to sit and think of something important to say while sitting at your desk. You can update Facebook and Twitter (mercifully limited to 142 characters) from your phone. You've got 300 friends who are almost forced to read the self adoring minutia of your day when they log on.

I think a lot of normal people are passing themselves off as fucking stupid, fucking high, or fucking both. Perhaps I'm jaded at the whole relationship thing, but is there anything more nauseating than someone who has to crow bar something about their significant other into a Facebook update? It's almost viral in that people have started to exclaim that they "love life" and the fishing for sympathy when something bad happens.

The ability to self publish is one that should be taken seriously. One should think about everything they say and think "is this important for everyone to hear and /or will they give a shit?"

Thank you for your time. Now get me a fucking drink.

gooch:out