Oh Dear Facebook, Dear Facebook

Dear Facebook,

Once upon a time you were my dear friend. When I was finally convinced to go on a blind date with you, I found that you were easier to make out with than a one night stand (disclaimer - not that I would know about that – I’m going with how they look in the movies, and it makes for a good line there). I loved how easy it was to see and “talk” to friends and reconnect with old ones. I looked to you for a break - maybe I had just enough time for a cup of coffee and a chat and there you were - friendly and easy to get along with. But then you changed. You became that complicated, demanding friend who wanted to monopolize my time, and wanted me all to herself; the one who could never take no for an answer, and any conversation takes forever to navigate. I am no longer happy with my “friend.” If I want someone to tell me who I should be interested in, I’ll go back to junior high school, and if I want to hear that I'm stupid for being interested in things you think I should have no interest in, I'll talk to my teenagers.

Now you have these “algorithms” that tell me who to see and interact with, a ticker constantly yelling at me, "look at me" (geez, I already had toddlers), and I see that a “timeline” is in my future. Mark Zuckerberg, 27 in all his adolescent wisdom (hey, to me he’s still an adolescent) has said, “It’s your whole life….it’s so simple.” Dude – the people who need to know about my whole life already do know about my whole life. Not everybody in the world needs to know about my whole life and honestly, I don’t need nor have the time to know about theirs either. 

Mark thinks there is a lack of integrity in having two lives – the one for work and the one outside of work. Personally I don’t see the problem. When I was a financial geek at a major corporation, those people didn’t give a flip about my taste in music, which I found out one year when young (I think I was around, say, 27), and I changed my voice-mail to MC Hammer's, "Pray" at year end financial closing of the books. Some people were not amused. Could I control costs…now that was important.  And they definitely didn’t want to see the pictures of my babies’ ad nauseum the way my close family and friends care to (or pretend to so that I will reciprocate the pretense).

I’m just not a fan of the changes. Clean it up and simplify, please. Because right now…Google+ is starting to look good to me. 

Sincerely,

Facebook user 345,667,899