I’ve heard a lot about these new-fangled Facebooks and My Spaces and Twitters and such. They’re basically variations on the old-timey bulletin board systems I used to frequent before the world wide web hit. That 2400 baud Hayes modem was big pimpin’. But I digress. I know a lot of people that spend a fair amount of time an energy on Facebook. The CEO of the company I work for has a facebook page. So does my wife. And my sister. But not me.
Why? Well mostly because of how I was first introduced to it. Somebody comes across something interesting, publishes his thoughts about it and maybe a picture onto his page, and sends me a link. Or tweets about it. Or posts to a web forum. Doesn’t matter. I know the person, and am pretty numb regarding nonsense like duckrolls and rickrolls, so I follow it. When it lands on Facebook, the link provided invariably takes me to the following:
No, thank you. I won’t be signing in or signing up to view what amounts to a random blog post. My opinion of the poster takes a hit every time I run across this error, particularly when the link was put somewhere open to the public. This is somehow even more obnoxious than CAPTCHA systems, as those are most frequently employed to deter automated spam.
I was a facebook user. I got some spam from a couple gullible folks who allowed their accounts to be compromised, and realized there’s no real way to fight that. Also, quizzes make me ill. I was sticking it out because I had a few friends I wanted to keep in touch with who didn’t really use email (who doesn’t use email?) and had no other way they could be reached electronically. But… they know how to get ahold of me if they want to so I rid myself of that neo-AOLian nightmare.
From an outsider’s perspective, I would have likened Myspace to AOL more so than Facebook. Congratulations for breaking the habit, though.