Facebook is unruly

Unruly like a child raised by wolves in the wild. I feel like a total Ted Kaczynski whenever I log on: the ads for stuff I don't think I'd ever want creeping up in my Mini Feed, the constant threat that even the most embarrassing of my personal purchases are going to be plastered all over my friends', family's, and mere acquaintances' News Feeds by those newfangled "Beacon Ads" (they couldn't have chosen a more draconian name), the ubiquitous application-du-jour that 12 of my friends have "invited" me to try out, hastily written by some third-rate CS student just hoping to have something, anything, linked to his name on the web, so he can pad his stupid resume enough to get in the door at some equally third-rate over-valuated techno-firm with its eye only on getting bought out for some crazy amount of money by some even-more third-rate VC firm. I was a kid in the late 90's, and I didn't really understand how the bubble burst back then, but it's oh-so-obvious now... Anyway, here's an interesting article by Alex Iskold about why my ranting is totally justified.

P.S. The Developer Application? It "lets you manage the applications you build using Facebook Platform. Edit your application settings, submit your application to the directory, and connect with other developers." It is either a joke or... I don't know. Too much. My head burns.



My friend Vicki Simon is currently tooling with the app-making app, working on what she likes to call "Facebook Suicide". Vicki, who's as fed up with FB as I am, says:

"its gonna allow you to kill yourself on facebook and then send a suicide note to all yo [sic] friends".

Once everyone on FB has committed "suicide," (and why not? the appeal is obvious) an angry email will be sent to Mark Zuckerberg telling him how much he sucks.