"Social Media" or "Social MANIA"

“Social Media” or “Social MANIA”

I’m sure I’m not the only one with conflicting feelings about Facebook. I’m currently invested in FB, because I see the value of the huge trend and popularity. The stock finally took off and returned to slightly pass it’s initial IPO. But the huge popular trend is not healthy and very seldom real and beneficial. It is mostly extraordinarily superficial and fake. A better name for FB would be “FAKE BOOK” as I’ve written about before in another editorial by that name on my blog at www.conniebryan.com.

Apparently there are more and more folks like myself who use FB as a ‘rough draft’ editorial blog starting point, as it was recently pointed out on CNBC that FB is working on a feature to allow users to immediately transfer their blog post to “WordPress”. So that is a positive sign for those who have something of substance to post. But that is so uncommon and the exception to the rule.

99.9% of what you see on FB is ignorant, mind numbing, meaningless drivel, or self-serving people who say things as though they thought of it, that are ripped off and not original… and this kind of hyper-shallow content gets a lot of responses from the “Honey Boo Boo”/”Indiana Inbred Exes”/”God,Guns &Pedophiles” generation.

For instance, I saw someone the other day post the following as though it was her material, when it was probably used by the first female neanderthal standup comic  at the “Cave Comedy Night”. She posted:

“The fundamental difference between men and women is women have to like a guy to have sex with them”

Seemingly by penile reflex, guys respond as though she came up with something so original, lol.  Attention seeking girls on FAKE BOOK have learned a long time ago that shallow posts about sex or 420 will get lots of responses. That is because of the overwhelming lack of meaningful content here. It is so bad I feel like words can’t describe just how bad it is, the direction our culture is going as reflected on FAKE BOOK with people’s posts and the LACK of community moral fiber, ethics and good character displayed.

You post something on FAKE BOOK of substance, and watch how few people want to take the time to contribute. The few who occasionally do are those who I’m describing, that don’t want to be challenged for their bad role modeling, dope use, religious bigotry, etc.

And one huge pet peeve that I’m sure many others share is the whole “friends” BS…They should be called ‘contacts’, because hardly any actually act like real friends. You never hear from them except to try to get you to ‘like’ some money making site/enterprise of theirs.

It is actually because they truly are NOT your ‘friend’, that they think they are doing something good after seeing FB’s birthday reminder message, and forwarding you a two word message: “happy birthday”. Really??

 

I’ve never heard from you before, you’ve never had any interest in engaging in a conversation or communication thread on a post I’ve written, and you think I care to receive such a meaningless message prompted by a FB reminder tool?

But OK, so I’ll bite and take a chance and reply to them…”Thanks for the birthday wish, what’s new, what have you been up to lately?” (That’s a good way to engage a new “friend” right?) But they don’t even reply to your effort to follow up from their shallow ‘happy birthday’. Why? BECAUSE their ‘happy birthday’ msg was FAKE! They see you genuinely responding, trying to be real, and their thought is, “Who the F*%K is this, I don’t have time for this S#*T!”

If it was real at all, the “friend” would have something more detailed to say, maybe an effort to finally engage in a friendly conversation about possible like interests, etc. But that is NEVER the case, because this whole thing with FB is built on pretention and fakeness.

If you have 3000 “friends”, guess what…you DON’T! You have maybe THREE. The rest are FAKE. With few exceptions(Yes I realize some of you actually have more than three…you have 4 or 5) Generally they aren’t there for you other than faces on your screen that you never hear from unless they are selling something, want to USE you to ‘like’ something, or posting something that means next to nothing, like:

“Oh, I’m so happy watching Paula Deen on the Cooking Show with my three cats in my lap…Gonna try to make her “Klan Kobbler” tonight…MMM, MMM, GOOD!!”

One other similar pet peeve I have with FAKE BOOK are people who you make a ‘friend connection’ with, who then don’t even reply to a message you send them…or who specifically invite you to some event they are planning, and when you respond to them to ask a question, they don’t ever reply.

This of course is because of the overwhelming FAKENESS of their invite, as it was done in mass, creating the feeling that you were possibly specifically thought of for the invite, when of course you never even crossed the FAKE BOOK “friend’s” mind whatsoever. They just did a huge mass invite, and they don’t give a damn about taking a moment to respond to messages from individuals, they just want you to come help make them money, or give them a crowd, etc.

So like many others, I am very conflicted at present, regarding the FAKE BOOK scene. It may be that it’s currently a ‘necessary evil’ in learning how to stay up with the times on social media. But what I understand the word “social” and “society” and “community” to mean incorporates a different kind of meaningful, genuine interaction that I see is mostly MISSING ENTIRELY on FAKE BOOK.