Facebook hit another milestone this week.  It now claims that over 400 million people are part of the Facebook community; Face’rs, Bookies, FooBies!  Whatever you call them, they’re 400 million strong now.

I am one of those FooBies.  I’m not really proud of that, but I guess I can admit it now that there are more people on Facebook than in the United States.  I think it’s a law created by the healthcare companies that we join.  You know, to keep track of us. After digging through the millions of status updates the last few days, I started to think about how much this social network really is part of my life.  It’s addictive.  You can’t escape Facebook.  There’s even an iPhone app that will send you notifications when one of your friends, or someone who wants to become your friend, contacts you….or says anything about you….or thinks about you!  It’s like the girlfriend you just can’t stand, but you can’t dump her because she’s great in bed and she cleans your house.

I have to tell you that on the surface, I really hate Facebook.  I think it’s juvenile and redundant.  But so am I!  And I guess that’s why I can’t quit.  We’re two peas in a pod; Mutt AND Jeff, Donny AND Marie.  Facebook is the country to my rock ‘n roll!  We’re made for each other.

Over the last year or so that I’ve been trudging through Facebook, I’ve noticed that there are three types of users.  The first group are the ones who use the site as nothing but a massive social tool to connect with as many people as possible, and therefore converse with as many people as possible.  These people don’t get enough sex in their lives and are probably sexting or masturbating while Facebooking.  The need to get a life.

The second group are the self-serving opportunists who are looking to promote some kind of agenda.  This could be good or bad.  Pets: good.  Jesus: bad.

My favorites are the Jesus Freaks.  They just can’t help themselves; they obsessively post bible verses on their status updates.  And to make matters worse, it’s usually some off the wall, obscure verse that has such a vague meaning that they don’t even understand it!  If beating someone to death with a cane was legal in this country, I’d be the first in line to whip the shit out of these people.

The third group are the MIA people.  These are the one who signed up for an account for one of two reasons: pressure from friends, or, an idiot like me accidentally sent out a Facebook invite to their entire email address book and they found the invite the next morning in their inbox.  By the way, sorry!

If you know me personally, you are probably thinking that I fit into two of these three groups pretty snugly.  You’re right.  Group’s One and Two are totally me.  I’m there for the social interaction and the self promotion.  Remember, I have a blog to promote and what better way to generate readers than to sucker all my friends into visiting?  But I have a little of Group Three in me.  I actually did accidentally send out an invite to every single person in my email address book.  Here’s the bad part about that: Gmail saves EVERY SINGLE email address that have ever come into your account.  So when my mother-in-law sends out her political right-wing spam, those email addresses are saved in my address book.  Guess where the Facebook invite went?  That’s right.  All of them.  All of a sudden I had Republican Hell trying to friend me on Facebook.  It’s a good thing Republicans aren’t very smart and the crowd easily dispersed.

But honestly, I’m about to truly become part of the MIA group…that is, if they’ll accept me.  I’ve grown tired and weary of Facebook.  I’m sick of the same old stuff every time I log on.  I can weed out a lot of the junk on my News/Status Feed with some plugins on Firefox, but there’s still a lot of junk out there.

In addition, Facebook seems to come out with a new homepage every three months or so.  Look, Microsoft releases the most bugged out, error prone, virus infected software ever made, and even THEY don’t change their look that much.

I have some suggestions for Facebook.  These are things that I, a 43 year old, under-sexed, overweight, graying, pervert of a loudmouth, douchebag wants to see:

• Who’s Hot! Button:  This would automatically open up a page where any of your female friends posted pictures of themselves on vacation, drinking excessively, and in a bikini.
• Beam Me Up, Jesus! Button:  This button would sort all of the Religi-Tards into a section where I could peruse their status updates and report the absurdity on my blog.
• Newly Single & Horny! Button:  This one would group all of the hot chicks into a group when they become single.  Of course, I’m not single, but I want to see the pictures they begin to post as they move through “bounce-back” sex and “girls-weekends!”  There’s always a chance that they’ll drink too much and end up doing a stripper dance on the bar, and I want to be there!
• Fuck You! Button:  This is the most important button on my list.  This button will allow you to tell someone to fuck off and die and defriend them all at the same time.  The best part about this button is that once pushed, it will run a script that will not allow them to say Fuck You! back!  Hey, it’s my concept dream.  I can create it anyway I want it.
  

I’ll admit that I can’t live without Facebook at the moment.  I get a lot of pleasure out of seeing my old friends and new friends and keeping up with certain parts of their lives.

My father has always said that it would be great if you could get rid of 90% of the crap on there and just see the important stuff that you really want to see.  Unfortunately, the cost of the 10% of good stuff is the 90% of crap.  It’s getting better though.  I’m beginning to weed through a lot of the 90% so that only the 10% shines.  I’m sure that one of these days I will just start to slow down and not check the site so much.  I’ll forget about it for a day.  Then that one day will turn into two, and so on, until it reaches obscurity and I fully embrace my position in the MIA group.

But until then, I’m going to continue my self preservation/promotion efforts and exploit Facebook to the fullest extent.  Remember, I write 90% of this drivel so 10% of you will read it!

Left Of Sean

By the way, I just looked up drivel to make sure I spelled it correctly and I discovered a new word you might enjoy:  twaddle!

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