Sunday, 22 February 2015

Why I Don't Like Sharing Facebook

... mate, look; Facebook; straight sucks ...”

OK, let me start out by pointing out that this is probably going to be highly hypocritical as the majority of the traffic to this site comes via Facebook, but I've been dining out on the hand that feeds me for twenty-eight years so far, so fuck it.

So for as long as I can remember – and remember I can't remember much – I've had a lessening interest in good old Facebook. As an antisocial bastard, I've always been slightly uneasy with the idea of site, but obviously I opted in due to peer pressure because that never pointed me in the wrong direction before [Line added while proofreading with a beer and zoot]. Over the years it's been good to me, but just recently I've distanced myself from it.

But why Ben?

At first I thought it was due to my selfishness – an attribute I've always used as my major influence in decision making times – has grown, therefore leaving me to care slightly less about the people I went to school with and their troubles and woes. But no, that's always been in the case.

In fact that was part of the attraction of Facebook; to be ever-so-slightly stalking people from your past to see how miserable their lives had become, in turn boosting your own confidence due to your life being marginally better than theirs. We all do it. That's probably due to the no-holds-barred spree of accepting friend requests when joining. We all took the role of an unpopular kid throwing a party; letting anybody that wanted to enter; into your little online social circle, despite the fact you never cared for them and vice versa.

What was great is you could basically watch a relationship blossom and then crumble from the comfort of your PC chair;

  • Stacy is in a new relationship with Bob.
  • A few loving updates from both, ridiculously over-using emoticons.
  • Then one day; Stacy posts “grrrrrrr men!”
  • An hour later, Bob posts; “bitchez b trippin”
  • The stage is now fully set to watch these two idiots argue it out on good old Facebook for all of us to bask in.

It was all the fun of Jeremy Kyle without the agony of Jeremy Kyle himself. But then something happen, I'm not sure what, maybe people wizened up to sharing every intimate detail of their lives or maybe I've been cut off from those Facebook Friends in a cull. Or maybe, just maybe, users took a shift from sharing their own personal lives to simply sharing other 'content'.

Now, when I go online to check to see if Stacy and Bob ever got back together, or whether or not Bob had finally started paying the child support, I can't find anything in my news feed besides reposts of LADBible, shitty Vines and links to dubious websites filled with random lists like; “Top 10 Child Actors that Turned to Drugs”. So I'm going to take it on myself to explain; nobody cares about this shit people! I already follow LADBible on Twitter, I don't need to some cunt on Facebook reposting every-fucking-thing they post, the only Vine I watch is my own sex-tape and I couldn't give a fuck about those websites that list things in top 10s but make you click to each next page for the continued countdown.

Facebook has gone from 'connecting with friends' to sharing bullshit that's posted elsewhere online. You see, this is where the hypocrisy begins, because the likeliness is you clicked a link on Facebook to get to here, almost making the irony of my argument to ridiculous to bare. But I'll defend myself; I'm sharing my content. Me; Ben Broughton, I [poorly] wrote these words, this isn't the latest online fad that will dwindle in a few months time [this is my eighth year, I'm starting to think it'll never catch on]. But this is an extension of myself I'm sharing with you [kinky] and I'm doing it via Facebook so my friends can connect with it, because they're unlikely to check my blog everyday for updates due to my sporadic updates, I don't even think David B******** has this as his homepage anymore.

You see, I do this because I enjoy it, I share it with others so they can hopefully enjoy it too. I don't beg people to repost or comment because I'd hate for my content to become that very content I despise. Yes, I could simply perform a cull and remove the dead weight from Facebook, but I've much better things to do with my time, like write, play with Fiona or watch paint dry [I'll share the video on Facebook later, if you want to check it out], but more importantly, if I did remove these people from Facebook they may not have stumbled across this blog, and maybe, just maybe, I'm talking some sense to them.

Or maybe I'm not. So in the mean time, if someone could keep tabs on Facebook and let me know when it changes I'd be very happy.

Thanks for your time.

And remember to REPOST, SHARE and COMMENT, you fucking sheep.

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