Saturday, February 28, 2009
I originally wanted to upload a word document for you to analyse on your own, but I don't want to use yousendit, and I don't really trust the other website that I found, 2Shared, all that trustworthy.
This blog post is about an article that I volunteered to design for MJ's college publications, after a failed request to do a game review on the tech section. (I was going to do L4d. Hey... that suddenly makes me feel like wanting to play it!) This other guy beat me to it on his article of facebook, and my sudden deadline given 2 days in advance of the deadline itself (partly my fault) made me chiong through it last night. Strangely, even though I slept at 12:12 last night, I'm not at all sick today.
Anyway, I don't blindly use the text and do the design, I read through the article and actually got a sense that the author is a fag. A narcissistic fag who lives in a world of black and white.
"Anyone can create a page for themselves after which other users can then visit the page and opt to become your fans. Yes – it’s a page to gather and keep tabs of your own fan base! Famous personalities with their own fan-pages include John McCain. His page allows people to visit and join as a fan or supporter.If you really want to know how popular you are among your friends, why not just set up a simple page like this? Egotism and narcissistic tendencies aside, it would be interesting and amusing to find out how big your fan base is (or even if you have one)."
He has a fan page of himself that consists of 10 persons. Egotism and narcissistic tendencies aside? Dude, having his own fan page is everything to do with narcissism.
"The grand thing about Facebook is that, even though it’s a social networking site, it supports a variety of gaming opportunities that even geek-gamers can enjoy. If I had the choice, I would give the creators of Facebook a Nobel Peace Prize for unifying the community of online geeks and the cool social crowd all on one website."
This is one part I found most ridiculous. From this statement, I gather that he more or less thinks he is a 'cool social crowd' member. I also gather that his GP might be okay, but anything else more qualitative of an essay would spell his doom. Contrasting both ends of the spectrum- geeks and cool social people -is simply naive. Does this meanone cannot be a mere shadow the other, and no one exists in the middle of the spectrum? You're either a full-fledged, reclusive geek or a true ble, cool socialite. In addition, he seems to suggest that the only reason why geeks might ever frequent facebook is because it has games. Apparently, they all flock like bees to pollen to games, and without the games, the geeks would be, as ever, far removed from the socialites.
I was mulling over my own thoughts when I consciously critiqued this guy's article, and felt that I myself was biased, because I felt a part of me being insulted by his geek-socialite comparison. I'm far from anything of a social creature, I like to meet friends, but not on any level to that of many people I know in MJ. Do I now 'not naturally belong' to facebook, or any attempt at socialising? (look again at "even geek gamers can enjoy") Still, I don't think i'm giving a partial analysis of his article.
I’ve had much fun using this technological marvel. This year, I’ve not missed a birthday yet. In a way, Facebook saved my life. I hope you’ve learned something from this article today. If you haven’t, give yourself a 10/10 for addiction-to-Facebook scale. You maxed out the score and earned yourself the title of “Facebook Junkie”.
What I've always been opposed to is the concept of a birthday reminder feature. It's possibly one reason why I remember very few birthdays, but nevertheless I oppose such an automatic feature that removes the need of a person to consciously remember a person's birthday. It makes the day seem insignificant and relegated to the reminder from an app. Still, since I myself am not a conscious birthday remembering person, I don't have much to argue on this basis.
What I can argue about, however, is that this guy, throughout his whole article, seems to follow the general impression that an internet website is helping to promote socialising. I needn't have to point you to the impressive number of articles (both online and off) that argue this, primarily questioning how a website far removed from face-to-face interaction can substitute for real bonding, especially if one is glued to his computer screen updating his own fan page or personal page. Keeping in touch, yes, substituting or promoting social bonding, definitely no.
I'll give you my own example. I have an account I set up some time ago, specifically to view some pictures of the Dubai trip that Chin Hui put up. After that, I had some friend requests from people I knew, but then there were some whom I had no idea they were. Sure, friendships start when you talk to someone new, (how else?) but definitely not when you add people you know nothing about, and don't attempt to talk to. I had this person from MJ adding me, and she did nothing after that.
Far be it that I was perturbed, (no, seriously.) I simply questioned the reason why she might have added me, and came to a conclusion that it is one of those things that get you a few hundred friends on your friends list. That instance wasn't the last one. I've got middle aged singaporeans who are as familiar as Joe the Plumber adding me, but the buck has stopped there, and they can go add other random f***ing individuals to boost their narcissistic selfs.
If anything, this article that I've designed (now slightly against my will) has just shown me how this picture below has come about. I'm not saying everyone who uses facebook is a narcissistic fag like him, I'm just saying that narcissistic fags like him just get an ego boost from a facebook.
posted by joseph at 8:29 AM