Double your pleasure, half the fun & Facebook politics

Hoho! Yes yes. This merits some thought. Adding a blog? What self-indulgence. I struggle with this Blog and can’t imagine how much duller a second would be.

Sometimes I jab a USB drive into my eye after I read a post the next morning (this one won’t be an exception… so if I have a red eye tomorrow, console me).

You may not have noticed, but I try to see if the micro is a reflection of the macro. I fail miserably 99.9% of the time, but even that has its appeals. A second blog won’t allow me that pleasure.

The idea reeks of a contrived attempt at convergence. My approach to a journalistic story for a blog would be mechanically different from one I’m sending to print. I’ll prove this to you on the orgy known as Election Night.

I do like suggestions of community blogs, and feel that would be much more productive on many levels. We’ll get the tools down, as well as some team work in. I also believe it has much more legitimacy (at face value anyway).

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Some of my craft classmates saw me stroll in to class today with a massive envelope, MRI in block letters across the front. No worries, it’s only three degenerated disks in my thoracic spinal area. I half-jokingly told the doc it was from my workload in school.

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On to the elections and the outstanding yet meaningless contribution technology has made to it. I’m talking about Facebook (again). They’ve added an “election pulse” option to all profiles, allowing you to list candidates you support.

All candidates have profiles on this social networking site, though I’m not sure if they are legitimately maintained by the candidates, PAC’s or run by Facebook.

The governator, Arnold Schwazenegger, seems to have a legit page. I’m only assuming because he doesn’t have the standard issue American flag as his profile picture. He’s also eating the competition alive, with a 33 point lead over the democratic challenger Phil Angelides. He’s eating him like a cake.

 

This controlled madness constitutes the highest level of political activism many of Facebook’s stoned, pimply users will undertake.

Which brings up the question of legitimacy. How many of these supporters are falling into the trap of youth-partisanship, and how many are genuinely informed on the issues and candidates?

More importantly, how many of these “supporters” will show up at the polls? If these voting patterns transfer over on election day, we might have a flood of democrats winning offices nationwide.

How other contested races are coming up in Facebook’s Election Pulse:

Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has a 12 point lead over Tom Kean Jr. (R).
Sherrod Brown’s lead over Mike Dewine (R-OH) jumped by 15 points in a single day, and is at 36 points.

Other important candidates losing according to the Election Pulse:

Rick Santorum (R-PA), Joe Leiberman (I-CT), Ken Blackwell (R-OH), Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), and George Allen (R-VA).

If nothing else, maybe a social networking site like Facebook can spark some semblance of interest in politics among the bong-hitting, Halo-playing population that is my generation.

And maybe, just maybe, Kinky Friedman will be governor of Texas one day.

Punch ‘em in the Face(book)

I’m happy that protesting and outrage finally meant something again. (It’s still an empty victory).

Mark Zuckerberg, the man who founded Facebook two years ago with other wedgie-entitled Harvard nerds, posted a tepid apology on Facebook. It seems the overwhelming cries for his head worked. (Well, not his head… most college students haven’t a clue who created Facebook. Must have been David Hasselhoff…) Here’s the whimpering and sobbing part:

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I’d like to try to correct those errors now.

So it’s not that the features suck… he just neglected to explain why they’re awesome? Shouldn’t these new features, if they’re good, not have to explain themselves? As Facebook grew and expanded to include photos and notes, the introductions to these new features consisted of “Hey, you can put your pictures up now.” It was stupid-easy, which was its appeal.

But give Zuckerberg some credit, his motivations have been ethical all along…

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings – to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Or maybe they haven’t.

The solution he offers is better privacy controls - instead of scrapping the whole useless feed altogether. Although there are some decent arguments for the feed out there too.

But there is a valuable lesson to be learned, and someone else has said it first

Now if only we could be this organized about more important things. At least this proves that America’s youth CAN protest in an organized way.

We petition against what?

Time.com chronicles “what may be Gen Y’s first official revolution”

I am ashamed to be a member of my peer group. Apparently, the News Feed layout of Facebook (a popular online social network) has created such an uproar, the press had to be called in. I’d give it a day or two before this is front page NY Times fodder.

Let’s be clear: this new layout is not any more intrusive than Facebook ever was. Irritating, yes. Looking at my comp and seeing “Jackie just farted. 10:04AM” isn’t what I use the social network for.

But it is not violating my privacy. All the information it displays was available before, including the infamous time-stamp. Now people don’t have to be as diligent to find out you were dicking around on Facebook instead of studying for your midterm last night. Call the Supreme Court.
But for some half-witted Time reporter to label it as “Gen Y’s first revolution?” Are my peers really such imbeciles? Apparently yes.

By my count, there are currently over 900 Facebook groups devoted to bashing its News Feed. I have yet to find a group that has under 100 members, and some membership numbers range into the thousands.

In case you’re keeping count, 900+ groups appear when you search Facebook for “news feed.” Compare that to 34 groups for “September 11th” and 163 groups for “Iraq war.”
Some outstanding anti-news feed group titles include:

“News feed… wwwttttffffffff Facebook?”

“Find the person who created the News Feed”

“Welcome to Crapbook, the new Facebook. News Feed Sucks!!!!”

Never has any tool brought a single generation together as quickly as Facebook. And in a time of global strife and struggle, with terrorists getting hard-ons at the thought of bombing the shit out of us… with 2,600 volunteer soldiers, (most IN our peer group), dead… shoddy logic supporting an unconstitutional domestic spying program… WE STAND UP! WE FIGHT AND DEMAND AND FROTH AT THE MOUTH FOR A SOCIAL NETWORK THAT WON’T TELL YOU I STARTED LIKING “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS” AT 11:42PM!

If Facebook can just stop telling everyone that I just posted pictures of my iguana… all our other problems will be solved!

I hear footsteps. Oh, that’s my concern for the well-being and future of my peers leaving. You’re on your own folks, cause I don’t want anything to do with you and your warped priorities.

I officially stopped giving a shit for you at 9:32PM.

Full disclosure: I am not a member of any Facebook group that endorses or berates the News Feed. I could give less than a shit.