A Review of Facebook

Everyone knows facebook, so I figured I’d start there. Go big or go home, right? Well, I’m already at home. I live there. But, you get the picture.

Things I like: It allows you to keep in touch with everyone (even people you forgot existed). No, but really, it’s nice to know what Harry Potter character my elementary school teacher’s brother’s son most resembles. It lets you look at pictures of people you don’t really know, lots of pictures!! It’s one big place to post information, videos and pictures, have conversations, etc. I guess the status feature is alright too, but some people use it a little excessively. Still though, the status feature alone is better than twitter as a whole so I guess I should give it some credit. And I like that you can send messages to people that not everyone can see (how mysterious of facebook).

One major plus is that you’ll always have something to talk about: “Did you see what her status said” or “I can’t believe so and so is pregnant for the 8^th time”. I also enjoy that it allows you to convey all of the essential information so that people don’t have to make small talk. Just by checking out your profile they’ll know your age, where you’re from, where you’re working, if you went to school, movie, music, and book tastes, if you’re single, and most importantly what sex you are attracted to (thank goodness we were able to get this question out of the way early). Really, why meet anyone in real life and talk to them, when you can just follow them on facebook?

Another thing I love about facebook is that it lets you be “friends” with celebrities. This is a great feature. A lot of times it’s just a group and you can be a “fan” of whomever you want. It makes you feel like you kind of know the person and can say they’re your friend (even though if it’s a group the chances are they didn’t even have to accept your friend request). The best part of this feature, is reading what people post on celebrities’ walls, and their belief that not only is it the actual person’s profile, but that they will take their time and read each entry. Favorites include: “You looked so beautiful on TV last night! Keep up the good work, we all love and support you” and “OH MY GOD. I saw you six years ago at the Altamonte Mall when you were first getting started and you were amazing!! I got your autograph after the show. You might remember me. I was the one wearing the pink shirt!!!!! I took a picture with you. I LOVE YOU”.

Things I would change: Pretty much everything I listed in the above section. Also, stop changing the website! If it is so popular, it doesn’t need to be updated every week with new layouts and features, give it some time to get old first. I’m also not a fan that other people can tag you in pictures, I think that should be a mutual decision. But I guess you’re the one that let the picture of you be taken at the beach bent over picking up the Frisbee, or on the toilet pretending to read a magazine. I guess the moral is: Pose at your own risk.

And I think there should be a set of unspoken rules that people follow when using facebook. I’ll list a few possibilities.

1. No one should be allowed to use facebook for more than 1 hour per day. It gets awkward when we see you in person and we don’t know if we should mention that we noticed you commented on every single picture we posted within 5 minutes, and then changed your status 16 times throughout the day. Yes, I do know that you had Thai food for lunch, that it gave you a stomach ache, that Tums didn’t help, and that after work you took a 2 hour nap. But what else is new?
2. The majority of pictures you post should include pictures of other people, or you with other people, not just shots of yourself all alone and your arm in the corner trying to hold the camera far enough back and centered to show your new do. That’s what Myspace is still around for.
3. People shouldn’t post cryptic status updates that don’t make any sense except to one person. It just makes you look kind of weird. And pretentious about how funny you must be.
4. Don’t comment on your own status before anyone else does. It makes you look kind of desperate and lonely.

Other things I would change about facebook include the fact that now the main page posts other people’s conversations, I think this might be crossing the line a bit. That you can give people dumb cartoon gifts. And that people can make friend suggestions for you, because it gets weird when you don’t agree with their suggestion.

What it makes me feel: Awkward and intrusive. And totally fulfilled.

God bless you facebook for letting us do things we’ve always wanted to do, and see things we never wanted to see. And for letting us do things that used to be border line illegal, with a misconstrued sense of comfort because it has become totally normal.