Facebook claims that there are over 300 million people that are registered on the site (here). They also say that over 8 billion minutes are spent on the site every day.
In my opinion, that is a lot of brainwashed people! I am certain the developers of Facebook have figured out some way of subtly conditioning the unsuspecting user’s mind to become addicted to the site. Perhaps they are using subliminal messages flashed on the screen so fast the naked eye does not register them, but the subconscious mind does… well ok, maybe not. (People were trying to say that TV advertisers did that kind of thing… even if they did, I don’t think it would work.)
I wonder just how many of those 300 million are what is termed ‘Facebook addicts’. These are the people who spend a huge portion of their lives on Facebook – so much that if under some circumstance they can not log on, they experience serious withdrawal.
Myself, I will admit that I spend a lot of time on Facebook – however, I am a veritable hermit so I believe I have an excuse: it is my main form of contact with the outside world! I don’t necessarily miss Facebook if I can’t log on, but I do miss my internets if they are not working…
I am mystified by this strange compulsion to play these bizarre and unrealistic games, like Farmville. What is it about running a pretend farm that makes it so hard to stay away from? It doesn’t have the perks of planting a real garden (like eating the fruits of your labours), but then it also does not have the drawbacks (like killing your body digging or having to deal with fertiliser). I do think it is rather odd that none of the animals on Farmville is farmed for meat. Were the developers trying to push a vegan agenda, or merely unwilling to deal with outraged PETA members? What you ‘harvest’ from the various animals is in some cases quite peculiar. In Farmville, originally you collected ‘yarn’ from a kitten – although now they have changed that to brushing the kitten, which you get money for. I wish someone would pay me money to brush my cat, I could make a fortune…
My husband spends an inordinate amount of time playing ‘Texas hold’em poker’ on Facebook… and spends the rest of his time telling me I am addicted to Facebook games!
Something else that bemuses me about Facebook is the ‘groups’. All of a sudden, instead of having a world full of isolated stupid people, you can go to Facebook and find 516,723 people who think that Jeremy Clarkson (of TV’s Top Gear) should be Prime Minister of Britain. We all know what happens when stupid people with stupid ideas get together and form groups… you get things like the Australian Democrats Party. The other kind of group that annoys me are the “We want Facebook back the way it was” or “we don’t like the new Facebook” groups that come around every time Facebook does an update. For crying out loud, people, you don’t pay to use it… get over it. If your dislike is so vehement, just stop using it. (But you won’t, because of course, you are addicted.)
Another Facebook-related disease is what my husband terms ‘Facebook diarrhoea’. This is were people ‘publish’ every single thing they do on every application, and share the intimate and mundane details of their lives with the rest of the world in an over-profusion of status updates (like people really care if your kid tinkled in the toilet five minutes ago… of course, if your cat tinkled into the human toilet five minutes ago, please share with us how you managed to train it – because I have tried and it doesn’t work. Litter Kwitter is a crock.)
I do wonder what would happen if for some reason or another Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites were forced to close down tomorrow… It would be amusing to start a rumour like that in a manner that people would actually believe… If you thought the Y2K bug hype or the Global Warming hype was bad – the closing down of social networking websites would be a global disaster the world might never recover from!!
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