social media blues

I hate facebook.

No, I really do. I am just not even kidding a little bit.

I check it incessantly, continuously, always navigating to see if anything new has been posted. Hoping for a diversion, I suppose.

It is such a wasteful time sink.

Facebook makes me despise human beings. It makes me judgey. Some of my actual thoughts about facebook even just today have been along these lines.

“Ugh. She is so annoying. Why do I even keep her on my friends list? She abuses exclamation points. She literally punctuates everything with an exclamation point. Is her life really exciting?”

“Wow, has she even worked a real day in her life? I mean, other than a quirky part-time job that bolsters her hobbies but doesn’t do a thing to advance her career. How does she afford all of this useless stuff? I understand being an enthusiast but seriously, where does she get the money for this? Concentrate on your career path so you can afford this stuff and stop mooching off of mom and dad. [beat] My mom and dad would never let me spend their money this way, because it is ridiculous.”

And eventually I catch myself in these angry thought spirals and I wonder why it bothers me so much that other people broadcast themselves as happy and enthusiastic about parts of their days. Facebook ruins everything. Especially my disposition. I am apparently a mean person.

I think I would like to take mine down, especially because I really don’t use it much to communicate with people from the past. There are other, less rage-inducing methods of contacting people. I keep in touch with Justine through facebook messages, and I feel a wonderful, warm sense of camaraderie after Syracuse basketball games as I scroll through my newsfeed.

Sports bring us together, man.

I’ve just been thinking about this now, because facebook made me feel grumpy when I was checking it. Maybe I could leave it up and just try not to check it compulsively. (ha. haha. ha.)

I like to believe that stupid internet quizzes are the harbingers of social media doom. It is probably not true, but I like to believe that it is.

I think stupid internet quizzes are that thing that everyone does, but only some people are proud to admit it. I have taken a few stupid internet quizzes, myself, and I have never, ever, ever posted the results to facebook. I just don’t want anyone to know that I have moseyed on over to Buzzfeed and clicked on some picture-squares to answer some questions, feeling ultimately unsatisfied and sort of dirty because I couldn’t answer the questions honestly because the multiple choices were all terrible and unrelated in any way to my life or perspective or even my favorite color.

They’ve been making the rounds on facebook lately. Maybe this can be a two birds with one stone kind of thing and take down facebook and buzzfeed at the same time. It’s funny, right, because facebook used to be this sort of exclusive club that you could only join with a specific (and then non-specific) .edu email address, and now anyone can join, and it’s not that I’m all for exclusivity but the demographics on facebook just don’t appeal to me anymore.

Buzzfeed, on the other hand, was mildly entertaining at the beginning, capitalizing on both people’s love for moving pictures (.gifs) and apparently people’s love for list-articles (see also: thoughtcatalog [or, you know, don’t]). Now it’s stupid and repetitive, which, when you think of it, is actually the only possible endgame for something like buzzfeed, and apparently now filled with 10000% more quizzes! (yay) I guess at least quizzes aren’t list-articles. Maybe I’ll write more about list articles later. I have feelings, you see. I don’t know if you could tell.

Back in the day, quizzes were really big on blogs. You know. Blogs. Greatestjournal (now defunct), xanga, livejournal, myspace blogs, you name it. Blogs have become less an expression of teenage angst and (apparently) more a career move.

Hey man. I don’t judge.

I LOVE cooking blogs. I follow a bunch in my RSS feed. It’s the best. They’re the best. These people with their beautiful clean, spacious kitchens and gorgeous photography. They make me hungry. They make me feel inspired.

But blogs aren’t social media anymore, anyway, no longer a hotbed of badly punctuated teenaged angst, and no one likes myspace. So I’m hoping that buzzfeed quizzes might take down facebook and do the dirty work of disengaging for me.

Well, quizzes and the bizarre new design choice where facebook automatically starts playing videos in your newsfeed for you. But WITHOUT SOUND.

I have some feelings on this. Would it be annoying if the videos autoplayed with sound? Yes. Yes it would. It would be highly annoying, which is why I assume that idea was nixed. But autoplaying videos on mute? Where if you decide you want to watch it, not only do you have to click unmute, but you also have to manually restart the video from the beginning? What is the POINT?

I think the question I am trying to ask is WHY WOULD YOU AUTOPLAY AT ALL?

I assume this all has to do with facebook finding itself incapable of making money. Well. That is okay.

Do you know what I like? I like email. I like email, I like texting, I even like google chat (google hangouts for google+ which is never going to happen, but the hangouts app is pretty slick). I like streamlined, simple services that do one job and do them well. I do not like facebook chat. I don’t like that facebook not only rolled chat and messages into one and the same, but that it has also made it well-nigh impossible to access your messages inbox.

WHY?!

I think I am going to go home. This has been a social media rant from a grumpy 20-something.

In other news: SU beat NC State by the skin of their teeth (I hate last-minute plays... you know, unless the game is good, which this wasn't) to remain undefeated.  This is good.  It snowed AGAIN today.  This is... neutral.  The snow is pretty.