The Problem with Facebook

I really cannot stand Facebook.  Every few months or so, the programmers decide that they need to continue to justify their existences, so they tweak some feature of the site and everyone originally hates the change but eventually adjusts and that's that, until something changes again.   At first we railed against the changes, but then philosophically accepting that progress is inevitable, we gave up and took it like the addicts we are.   It takes a minute or two to figure out where they have most recently decided to move the Home button, and then it's back to stalking people who you haven't talked to in years.

Now I have six randomly selected icons that give my "friends" generic visuals for my interests.  Apparently they have yet to find a stock photo for niche subjects like "reading", so they provide an image of a nebulous blob until they figure out what "reading" is and upload a picture of bookshelves or Paulo Coelho shooting an arrow over them yonder mountains or the like.  Now, if you want a visual of my personality, you just have to look at my homepage.  Apparently my personality is rather nebulously blobby.  And when I say I like breakfast, I don't intend eggs sunny side up on toast from an artistic angle, okay?  Oh well.

Today I read a news item about a girl who committed suicide by jumping off the top of a multi-story car park.  As she lay dying a large number of onlookers took pictures with their phones.  To be fair, angry is my idle speed, but that piece made me reeeally angry.  When our citizens see a girl's body, impossibly contorted, hideously messy, slowly surrendering its spirit for a broken heart, our first thought is "I can't wait to put this up on Facebook!

We don't rail against immorality in animals.  Most of us don't feel burning resentment towards the lioness who kills the rival woman's brood on the Discovery Channel.  Most of us don't hate the crazy woman who drowns her own kids either, we're just appalled.  We only hate it when we see our own ugliness in others.  That's the real bitch of it.  The real problem with Facebook is me. And Facebook is a metonym.  For the world.  In case you didn't catch that.