Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Facebook Multiplies the Multitudes

I surfed Facebook tonight as I am prone to do. It is fast becoming the social networking tool of choice. It is mentioned in the national news more often than MySpace, its nearest rival. On Facebook people can send fake fish to a Li'l Blue Cove to oppose pollution, donate virtual plants to save acres in the Tropical Rain Forest, play trivia games, pass an online Long Island Iced Tea to someone...it goes on indefinitely. It is like the old story of "Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby." As the story goes, a fox makes a grinning human figure out of sticky tar to trap a rabbit. The rabbit gets offended at the smiling, inanimate tar baby and hits it. His paw naturally sticks to the tar. The rabbit gets mad. He hits it again. Another paw sticks. And it keeps getting worse. Facebook is somewhat like that tar baby. It is enjoyable if you just grin at the tar baby and enjoy what's there, but it has so many applications and sub-applications that it's easy to feel like Br'er Rabbit with all four paws stuck in its myriad tentacular, sticky-tar activities.

I have drawn the line. I am absolutely not getting involved in Facebook's "Twenty-Five Things I Don't Want to Know About You."