FU*KBOOK

Yeah OK, bad title.
(I had a quick google, there actually is a fuckbook, I don't think I have to explain what that particular social network site has to offer)

Thing is Facebook makes me want to say 'FUCK' a LOT, so the change of name, in my head, seems apt.

On paper Facebook sounds like a great idea, a place where you can communicate for free with friends and family, share photos, stay in touch with distant relatives and long lost friends, it's great. I mean, being able to show a picture of your newborn moments after it happened to your nearest and dearest despite them being spread across the country or world for that matter (as is more often the case), is one of the great things about modern living and a testament to simple ideas executed perfectly.

But the by-product of that - and this is where the swearing comes in - is that same technology, the same simple interface and ease of which you can post information (not to mention the solitary, even secret, silent way you have to enter said information) leads people to post the most miniscule and irrelevant detail of every part of their life in what seems like the most
desperate and self important way. It makes me want to say 'FUCK THIS'.

Did I miss a memo or some cultural notice? When did people start believing other people were interested in the minutiae of their lives? I mean the bile we consume, like it or not, about celebrities (we like or not) is enough, I'm not really bothered if Angelina Jolie likes marmite or not, I might read more intently if she were making a movie with Christopher Nolan or something so why should I be at all interested if you've just washed a bowl of blackberries? It never crosses my mind, while performing menial kitchen tasks, to take the time out and take a picture of said task and upload it to the world. Do people who do this think we are all waiting with baited breath for the next riveting, must-see, action packed installment of 'Summer fruit washing - part deux?
FUCK THIS.

What makes an otherwise intelligent man rush to his computer to upload pictures of a(nother - not his fault) car crash (third in 3 years - NOT HIS FAULT!) and write about it BEFORE he deals with his insurance company (2 days later)?
FUCK THIS.

By time you have posted "sitting in the garden drinking a mojito, listening to Adele" and someone cares to read it you have finished the drink, it's pissing with rain, the song is over and Fern Cotton is talking shit about shoes or some bollocks. Keep it to yourself, enjoy YOUR moment for the brief moment it is, we ALL have them, you AREN'T unique.
FUCK THIS.

When I recently returned to Facebook after months, maybe years away, within 5 minutes of logging back on I had an email from a girl in the office who sits within spitting distance (I know, cos I spat at her once) letting me know how rude she thought it was I had been away so long! Apparently her Facebook account texts her mobile with rolling updates when any one of her - get this, 400 plus - 'friends' makes a change or posts some shit or uploads some ratty-ass picture from a bar at 2am with a bottle of WKD in their pudgy little hands and it dawned on me I'm not really the Facebook type.
FUCK THIS.

FUCK FACEBOOK
FUCKBOOK

Thats why I have a blog.
No self importance there, eh?.