These days I’m on a quest to kill timesucks in my life, and at the top of the list of worthless, mind-bending, time-devouring vortices of who fucking cares is Facebook. Of course, Barry will try to strangle me for shitting on his precious social networking, but I’ve decided that this shit is just useless.
#1. I don’t care about 90% of my facebook “friends”. Former high school classmates? Suck it. Ex-girlfriends? Suck it harder. Former classmates’ updates are 99.9992% about their children, and…guess what? I don’t care if your kids are sick. I don’t care if “Julie is LITTLE TIMMY TOOK HIS FIRST STEP TODAY OMG!!!!1!!!” I also don’t care if you’re sick, bored at work, looking forward to hanging out with other people, hoping to get drunk soon, off to dinner with your mom, thinking about going to bed, hung over, shirking your duties, etc.
#2. The people I DO care about that are my facebook friends I’m in touch with regularly, and it seems like Facebook is starting to take the place of even a regular email message. “Hey man, are we hitting the bar tonight? I sent you a facebook message.” No. We are not hitting the bar tonight, and to be honest there, Chad, I’m re-thinking my decision to hang out with you at all. I know it’s not your fault your parents saddled you with a douchey name, but try not to live up to it so hard. Facebook is not a valid form of communication. I don’t even require a (gasp) phone call - I’ll accept an email or even a text message.
#3. Stop with your “Li’l Green Patches”. You are NOT saving the rainforest by irritating others with these things. Keep your electronic “Cool Drinks”. They are not quenching anyone’s thirst. All the little causes? Nothing connected with my hitting “accept” is going to cure cancer, ban pedophiles, free Mumia, end George Foreman commercials or fight volcano abuse. I don’t care.
#4. I’m not a diligent worker to begin with, and oddly enough, this does bother me. I would like to be more efficient at my shitty job at the sneaker factory, if for no other reason than it makes the day go by faster. Have you noticed that when you’re procrastinating, time just crrraaaawwwwls? I have. And there are far too many “Start playing Scrabulous!” or “Try a Word Scramble!” messages flying at me to resist. I hate my job, but I need it to pay the mortgage. I like word games as much as the next guy, but burying myself in a spreadsheet makes 5 o’clock show up faster than beating my friends at Word Finder.
So I nuked my facebook page, and I’m already feeling more liberated. What else can we nuke in our lives that’ll leave us more time to do stuff that really matters?
PS don’t get me started on “Twitter”.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Barry Freed // Feb 16, 2009 at 6:00 pm
As expected, I am going to shit on you (I’m not going to strangle you, but shitting on you seems viable).
Figuratively, of course.
1. As far as not caring about your facebook “friends”, I have one question: why did you add them? To me, facebook is only useful when you’re trying to catch up or communicate with someone. I, too, don’t care on the status updates of peripheral acquaintances, so I just don’t pay attention to them.
2. Totally agree with you there. To use a real-world analogy….Let’s say we all hang out at a certain bar. But we’re not ALWAYS there. If I wanted to see what you were up to, I wouldn’t leave a note for you at the bar. I’d contact you directly. To say “Hey, I didn’t know everyone was going out tonight” and hear “Dude, I left a note for you at the bar” is the rough equivalent of leaving a facebook message.
3. Not sure what you’re talking about here. Little Green Patches? Never heard of them, but I can confidently say I’m not interested.
4. Wait, are you saying that facebook is the root cause of your procrastination? Now that you’ve deleted your account, do you really think that you’ll never spend time procrastinating when you should be whipping the underage workers putting the soles on sneakers too slowly? I have to think that it’s like saying “I spend too much time at the bar, so I burned it to the ground.”
I guess I both agree and disagree with you here. Sure, facebook is a time vampire with lots of useless features and it is definitely an enabler for those that want to share every moment of their lives. But hey, it’s easy to avoid it.
And twitter, my friend, is one of the greatest things since sliced…okay, no it isn’t. But I like it. Bah.
2 Randi // Feb 16, 2009 at 11:04 pm
As far as Facebook is concerned, I have never really gotten into it. I registered, but I never made a Facebook page. I had a MySpace WAYYYYY after it was cool and I used it to stalk friends for hours at at time. And yes, my MySpace was pimped. Thank-you very much. I think my Intervention came when work banned the use of MySpace, Facebook, and various other social networking sites. Now I have to waste my time with Perez Hilton and Icanhascheezburger. I think that social networking sites aren’t really the root of timesuckiness. I think the internets overall are to blame. It’s filled with a little good information, but mostly tons of garbage that kills your brain slowly, neuron by neuron…but we all love it. So, like fast food, I love the internet and hate it all at the same time. Fast food’s tasty, but it’s slowly making my ass the size of a small satellite…just like the internet. No, wait, that doesn’t work…whatever.
Point is, if you’re the type of person who will find something to waste your time when you have a report due in 1 hour, saying to yourself, I can write that in 15 minutes (like I’ve been since I was in junior high), you’re always gonna be like that, regardless of if it’s the internet wasting your time or something else.
Anyway, this is getting too long, I’ll shut up now.
Oh, and nice use of the phrase Time Vampire, Barry. Well played.
3 Jimmy Hoffa // Feb 17, 2009 at 10:27 am
Good points, people. I’ll say this by way of response:
- I agree with Randi to an extent - if you’re gonna waste time, you’re gonna waste time. To offer a crappy analogy, to me it’s like the difference between citric acid and sulfuric acid. Sure, they both burn, but one you can at least stomach in quantities, where as the other will chew through your flesh in minutes. Facebook, to me, is sulfuric acid. Useful in a very narrow application, toxic and dangerous in all others.
- Barry - love your “Dude, I left you a note at the bar!” bit. See the A&M post about facebook to learn about “lil green patches” or “cool drinks” etc. They’re annoying.
4 Magglio // Feb 17, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Wow. Great minds think alike?
5 Jimmy Hoffa // Feb 17, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Yeah - it crossed my mind briefly that you straight up ripped us off, but I didn’t think even you tossers would be that lame.
6 Magglio // Feb 17, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Jimbo - we wouldn’t do that to you guys. We truly wrote ours before we saw yours. Nevertheless if you want to arm wrestle we’re down. plus, you still owe us a post from when the C’s beat the Lakers. Quit stalling.
7 Magglio // Feb 17, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Look at you posting comments on that chick’s blog Jimbo. She’s a helluva writer don’t you think?
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