Social Networking...and Farmville

Hello my elven friends I hope you are all well in the midst of
Christmas 2010. Something ive been meaning to post about for some time now, is social networking and Facebook. Why? It has me split down the middle the same way I am about Glee - I hate it, but im addicted to it. Recently I have been trying to remember what I used to do online before the invention of bebo or facebook. Bebo of course was just an international swingers affiliate for teenagers, moonlighting as a social networking site so naturally when my online pimp business was exposed, I reverted back to having to fill my time aimlessly once again. I mulled this over in my head and I tried to recall the sites I visited before the online networking bubble exploded....and I cant remember... *cough*REDTUBE,ILOVEPANDA's.com and ratemypieball.net *cough*. Although I do know that even before I had a mobile phone at the tender age of 16, I used to physically knock into my friends houses to see if they wanted to come out to play, as opposed to leaving them a message on their personalised webpage having seen them an hour earlier stating 'Hi, what time will we meet up tonight?'. The ideal is just one big gigantic egotistal indulgance that we've all uncontrollably been sucked into. For instance before Facebook, would your friend who had a secret obsession with becoming a commercial model have greeted you at the door in a bikini striking blue steel? Highly unlikely - so why post pictures of yourself in an ablum entitled 'lilly shoot', as if it is was a real event at which you were paid to model and not the other way round? Please, you're just showing off your fantastic breasts and my God they are fantastic might I add. Or would you call over to your friends house before making a cup of tea and state; 'Just putting on the kettle, then settling in for X-Factor', and just walk away? I think not my friends. So what is this post really about? Perhaps the backward evolution of social networking rather than the concept of it? Yes, I like that. So, what do I 'like' about social networking? (see what I did there?). Well, I would like to think its creation was the brainchild of someone who thought to connect people from all around the world and not necessarily a group of next-door neighbours or indeed someone sitting across the room from you, through the miracle of our generation that is, the world wide web. But then some really annoying person went and invented Farmville... It could only have been conceived by someone in RTE since it revolves solely around, wait for it..... A FARM! I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO INVEST THEIR TIME IN SOMETHING SO UTTERLY POINTLESS?! Quick! Lets nurture the virtual grass, then lets milk a cow and afterwards lets meet up in the disco barn for a virtual pig orgy. Seriously!? This is the 21st century, if you're going to build digital frontiers, invent a world like TRON or the Matrix where you can ride around on cool looking motorcycles instead of a tractor. I also wish people would stop posting 'locked' questions on my page - the answers to which rest behind a very annoying process of downloading the 'app', acquiring a series of Tesco points and then having to post questions about that person on my own page! Usually I dont even bother but its always convenient that someone you fancy happens to post a provocative question like 'Do you think Deco is hot?' - after which you cant help but wade through all of the crap in the hope that it will be worth it in the end... which usually it isn't because everytime the answer is 'no, he's too short'(thanks for that Rita, well I think you're a fat tramp how about that?). The thing about facebook is that its becoming impossible to live without; I mean I woke up in the middle of the night last night to drop the browns off at the superbowl and I actually brought my phone to check my facebook!? Now that's a serious problem. Has it lost its meaning? Its novelty? Is it now an extension of ourselves? All of our pictures, all of our status updates - has it evolved into a projection of ourselves woven so subvertly into our subconscious fabric that it has created a new part of us? Are we characters on our own social networking webpage or are we truly ourselves? Who airs dirty laundry after all? The reality is, ultimately its about control and perception - and the ability to control perception. Dont like something someone has written on your page?-delete it. Dont like a photo you've been tagged in - de-tag it. The power rests in the touch of a button and you control the perception the world has of you. Its glorious. Perhaps we've become addicted to being the online version of ourselves? Perhaps Im talking absolute shite. Who knows? But ask yourself, what are you really looking for when you login to Facebook? I know what Im looking for; that album entitled 'lilly shoot'.

Bottomline: Social Networking has fallen victim to backward evolution and is now just another form of the television. Why not read an interesting book instead of doing some virtual stalking?

Deco