WiFi Intelligence

Will Rogers once said, "All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance. " Just imagine the dept of his ignorance had Mr. Rogers been born during the time of the Internet.

Yesterday it was reported in a television news cast that Britain's Prince Harry had broken up with his steady girlfriend, Chelsy Davy. The fact that this is worthy of broadcast will be left for another discussion, but here is the scary part. The reporter stated that although an official Royal spokesman would neither affirmed nor denied the story "Chelsy Davy's FaceBook page had been changed from a status of 'in a relationship' to 'unattached'. "

FACEBOOK? Frickin' FACEBOOK is now a reporter's confidential background source for the news? This rhetorical question loops back on itself to become its own answer. (Not unlike a dog chasing his tail so fast that he eventually runs up his own ass and disappears) If the footnote to a news story has the word FaceBook in it, then it is not really a newsworthy story.

One can find earlier blogs on my dislike of FaceBook . I am first to admit that I don't get it but in true FaceBook fashion my lack of understanding does not mean an inability to judge. Perhaps I need some metaphor to help me understand the real world equivelant of FaceBook.

Let's assume that surfing the Internet is like a person walking down a city street. There are stores and library's to browse if you choose to explore. If you want to sent a letter you send an email, if you want to talk to someone on the street you text an instant message. Here is where the comparison gets hazy. FaceBook, I guess is supposed to be like Cheers in the Internet world. Someplace you can go where, "Everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came."

But this dog really doesn't hunt. In a virtual Cheers people aren't mumbling in the corner about their current status for all to hear. At the bar in virtual Cheers, there aren't people thrusting pictures of themselves in your face, or pulling out projectors to show you their latest video. Nor are there people coming up to you saying, "Would you be my friend. Confirm that we are friends. We have never met, but let's exchange all our personal information, and I will share your information with everyone I meet..... Oh... I just became friends with that guy over there, I think you ought to become friends with him too. Then he can share your information with everyone he might ever meet."

It seems to me that FaceBook is the virtual equivalent of walking into a mental hospital full of the terminally narcissistic. It is a place where people are so friendly they drool on you. A place where "friendship" means you are forced to listen to all the things a stranger did today, yesterday and tomorrow. You can look through albums of compromising pictures of FaceBook inmates and actually see the dysfunction of the group of friends you are now in league with.

Will Rogers got out just in time. Had he been alive today he would have been a blogger. His voice lost in a sea of ethernet FaceBook status statements and his genius reduced to the length of a Twitter.

As you were,
Jay