Mildly Offensive: Facebook frequenters find free speech futile

By: Dan Urbanski

Posted: 9/30/08

Before I start today's rant, I have a little disclaimer: If you've never heard of Facebook before, this column is going to be pretty boring and confusing. Feel free to disregard this article and go enjoy whatever you guys do when you're bored and alone and want to pretend that you're socially active. (CB Radio maybe? Tin cans tied to a very long wire?) This spiel, however, is for the other 25,077 and counting who are in the Oregon State network.

For those of you who aren't hip cool cats in the know, Facebook.com, the popular networking site, recently had a complete design overhaul that's caused a bit of a controversy on the internet because apparently what happens on the internet actually matters to some people. Lots of little things were changed, but one of the most noticeable ones was that Facebook applications, user created add-ons that can be shared, were no longer displayed on the front page. Some of you are probably wondering why this would be a big deal, but there's been a pretty large outcry from dedicated (read: whiny) Facebook fans. There have already been dozens of petitions created and a group with over 2.5 million members who think their opinion actually matters to a privately owned, ad-supported, international site with tens of millions of active users. Well, I don't care how many million strong protest the change, the new Facebook was a good move.

When applications first came out last year, I was mildly enthusiastic but I swiftly changed my tune once I realized how potentially disastrous their effects could be. Facebook quickly went from a serious college-oriented networking site to a giant contest to see who could collect the most sparkly stickers, cute animal photos, and useless quizzes to clutter up his or her page. That would have been almost bearable had it not been for all the harassing application invitations. Who came up with the idea for those "games" where all you do is spam and recruit your friends to gain ranks? I don't care if you're trying to be a higher level vampire, werewolf, or Supreme Court Justice (FYI, I'm a level-nine Ruth Bader Ginsburg), the only game I play once I get those invites is to see how quickly I can remove you as a friend.

The invitation problem seems to have died down in the last year or so but the total number of applications is still increasing. I've had a few friends who go so appy-happy (I just made that word up) that their pages literally took almost five minutes to load. All I wanted to do was post "Hey, what's up? LOL," but it would take me another minute or two just find their walls. With the new Facebook design, sanity is restored and most of the applications are now located on a separate page that you have to click a button to reach. This way, I have the freedom of knowing that if I ever desperately want to see .GIFs of dancing cats or know which of the Office characters I'm the most like (Jim), all I have to do is click.

If you're one of the people I've been ridiculing in this article, I'm deeply sorry. Why not make a Facebook group protesting it? And if that doesn't do anything for you, you can always go back to MySpace.