Hello and welcome to Brad Chesterton’s guide to social networking! If you’re not already familiar with such sites as Facebook, Myspace, A Small World or Linked In I say lucky you. Feel free to crawl back into your cave and be happy, you are not missing anything. For those of you that have fully embraced this new revolution in internet stupidity you have come to the right place as I will be providing you with a complete guide on the proper use of these social networks.
To kick things off I felt that I should begin by featuring today’s fastest growing and most popular network: Facebook. Before I get into a discussion on the dos and don’ts of Facebooking there are a few things that you should know about this latest interweb timewaster:
- Facebook takes your private data and shares it with their advertisers. That’s right, some account executive at Facebook, Inc. goes to some camera manufacturer and says “hey, we have 7.5 million dip-shits across the world who enjoy taking crappy pictures and then sharing them with everyone on their friends list, how would you like to advertise your new “it’s so easy a dip-shit could use it” camera with us?”. Now the maker of the camera for dip-shits has all your personal info and you have nothing in return except being an even bigger dip-shit.
- An Australian court ruled that Facebook is a legal medium to serve a summons. Read that carefully again. In other words someone decides to sue your ass for ten million dollars and instead of serving you in person they leave a nice little message for you on Facebook. Haven’t checked your Facebook profile in a few months? Tough shit, chances are the court date came and gone and you just lost. Not that you probably don’t deserve it but I am certain that you don’t have ten million dollars because if you did you wouldn’t be wasting your time on a social network!
- Facebook is making millions from your shitty content. Before the big economic Apocalypse that is currently taking place Facebook was valued at anywhere between $1 billion and $8 billion dollars and the company is projecting one billion dollars in revenue by 2015. All of this was made possible by you posting pictures of your ugly kids, videos of your boring lives and joining online causes that will help with nothing expect feeling good about yourself for all of 20 seconds. In the meantime the founders of Facebook are laughing all the way to the bank because they have discovered a way of getting rich off of the fact that you’re a loser and have nothing better to do in life than post your boring bullshit online. What does that make you? An even bigger loser.
- In 2005 two MIT students were able to download over 70,000 Facebook profiles from four schools. They did it by using an automated shell script and luckily it was only for a research project on Facebook privacy. Here is an excerpt from their report: “We examined how Facebook affects privacy, and found serious flaws in the system. Privacy on Facebook is undermined by three principal factors: users disclose too much, Facebook does not take adequate steps to protect user privacy, and third parties are actively seeking out end-user information using Facebook.” What does this mean for you? Simple, people a lot smarter than you are trying to get your personal info for any number of nefarious purposes and you are handing it to them on a silver platter. Nice work idiot, while you’re posting your latest video of your kid making a mess of himself while eating ice cream some felon half way across the country is applying for credit cards in your name!
I know what you’re thinking: “But Brad, its fun and it’s allowed me to reconnect with all my old buddies from college and high school! It can’t be that bad, besides, I don’t live in Austrailia!! LOL!”
Look, all I can say is you obviously haven’t given enough of a shit about these people for the past 20 years to stay in touch so why do you care now? These people are all older, uglier and more annoying than they were in your school days so cut it out and stop wasting your time.
Anyway, I am sure you won’t listen to me so the best I can do is give you some advice on how not to make a complete ass of yourself on Facebook. Make sure to check back soon and read the following upcoming articles:
- Status Updates: They say a lot about you and none of it is good.
- Facebook Causes: Choosing the right one not to give a shit about.
- Fan Clubs: Showing the world how shallow you really are.
- Applications: Fantastic time wasters for retarded chimps.
Your #1 source for vomiting robot dinosaurs. Since 2005.
Brad, do remind the reader that they can send their credit card information directly to us instead.
By the way, I’m talking to a girl here who used the words, “college,” “gbh,” “teenage son” and “delinquent child support.” Consider yourself served.