Rant: Terminally Stupid, or, Why Facebook Sucks

So much for Facebook.

I had an outstanding invitation from a friend to join Facebook, so I thought, "Why not?" I mean, sure, I have a low opinion of social-networking sites, but it's never going to change if I simply avoid them, right?

So I decided to take them up.

Now, as many of you know, from receiving private messages from me, I go by my initials, "B. D." Or B.D., BD, bd ... whatever.

The software geniuses over at Facebook must be smoking crack. Or maybe the cracks of each others asses. Because I really don't get it: How can you become one of the most popular websites in the world if you cannot even list your members' names correctly?

Seriously. I tried repeatedly. Facebook, however, is incapable of listing me as anything other than "B.d."

So you know what? Fuck 'em.

Here, think of it this way. In the world of fast food, which is unhealthy enough for people anyway, I prefer Wendy's to McDonald's. Burger King doesn't even register on my radar. But I don't patronize my neighborhood Wendy's anymore because it's just getting scary. And while I realize I can be a difficult customer—a cheeseburger without vegetable matter on it is so hard to figure out, you know—I put my foot down when it comes to ordering a cheeseburger and getting a chicken sandwich with bacon, mayo, and all the disgusting, sloppy, wilted vegetable matter they could muster. And it's real simple. I mean, I do sympathize. Sometimes you get going too fast and put mustard or mayonnaise on someone's burger, or onions, or whatever, when they don't want it. But if you can't tell the difference between beef and chicken, I don't trust you to cook the food at all. I mean, that's the point at which unhealthy becomes immediately dangerous. Those freaking morons at Wendy's cannot distinguish between beef and chicken. Of all the things in the world that "taste just like chicken", beef is not on the list. Indeed, it's entirely a different color, and it doesn't come with a breaded coating on it. Beef, chicken. Chicken, beef. So the safest thing is to simply never eat there again. If you can't tell the difference between chicken and beef, what kind of idiot do I have to be to trust you to not give me E. coli or listeria?

Likewise, Facebook. I have never, in all my days using my initials, encountered this problem before. Facebook may be the only website on the planet that cannot figure out how to list initials properly. So what's up, Facebook eggheads crackheads? How do you get to be one of the most popular websites in the world if you can't manage this simple task? In the end, it's worrisome. Because if they can't do this, why the hell should I trust them with any personal information?

No, really. Am I supposed to believe the information is secure if they can't accomplish this simple task?

Of course, it's in their system now, forever. Just ... fucking ... great.

So fuck them. Fuck Facebook. Whatever they're smoking over there, they ought to do the world a favor and overdose.

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Terminally stupid: After several tries, Facebook still couldn't get it right.​

Fuck 'em.

Oh, and my apologies to those friends of mine I won't be joining on Facebook.

 

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Oh dear.

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I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere

It was just one of those days. That was about the fourteenth bizarre happening. I mean, one of the bright spots of my day was going to the store to buy a pen in order to fill out certain paperwork. I have no idea where all the ball point pens have gone. So I ended up buying a two-pack of ... get this ... 7-Select brand pens. That's right. I bought the fucking 7-Eleven brand ball point retractable pens in order to fill out my goddamn passport application.

The point at which I broke down and started laughing hysterically—and kind of freaking out my daughter—was when I fumed through the retard-slow line at the bank, boiled at the retard-slow and dangerous traffic, and finally made it to the goddamn office with five minutes to spare ... only to find I left my birth certificate sitting atop the refrigerator, where I put it to make sure I didn't lose it. After everything else that annoyed me about the world today, I managed to pull something off by the skin of my teeth only to fuck it up anyway.

So the whole Facebook episode occurred in the middle of that.

I can handle comparatively large problems very well. It's the little things that drive me nuts. Like losing my keys, or a hairband, in all of five seconds.

Or the idea of software geniuses unable to properly represent my name, yet being one of the most popular websites on the planet. I'm baffled as to how this has never come up before. I mean, when it comes to social networking, I'm well behind the trend. I think the surreality of the idea ... at one point, when I was trying to do "B." as my first name and "D." as my middle, the fucking system told me there were too many periods. How the hell does that work? I mean, really. If, before I ever tried registering, I had told you that my reason for not joining Facebook was that I didn't think they could spell "B.D." properly, wouldn't you have laughed? I mean, it never would have occurred to me ... until I witnessed it with my own very eyes. That deactivation email above? That's after at least five tries to make the system write any proper variation. I even stopped and thought about using "Bidi", but, you know, being in the mood I was, I didn't feel like giving them the satisfaction.

Now, when I stop to think about it, it's fucking hilarious. Eggheads, crackheads ... that's the only way I can make the inclusion of the following make sense:

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Mr. Fish, April 1, 2010​

 

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Apart from all that it is a bit overwhelming. Not only all the messages on the wall but the constant stream of gifts from various applications. There isn't even a way to dismiss the messages you don't want to read

 

It is a decent pic, for sure.

I am too old to get interested in FaceBook, though my teenage son is there. He was able to show me the trailers for the next Diablo offering through the site. Yeah Blizzard! I can't wait to get the game.

Gonna pass on FaceBook though, I have enough on my plate already.

 

Apparently, it's possible. Just have to figure out how this guy did it.
http://www.facebook.com/sully

Not true. You can remove applications, and entire friends from the activity stream. All you do is mouseover to the right of the application/friend/gift/whatever til you see the button that says "hide", and click on it. It will pop up a little "are you sure?" type dialog, and you'll never see it again. No more farmville.......no more gifts and other lameness


furthermore,you can actually add some interesting stuff to your stream:
Scott Polar Research Institute
Fermilab
Office of Naval Research
European Space Agency
NASA
JPL
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
LHC
CERN
The VLT
Hubble Space Telescope


.........actually, now that I think about it, we could do an entire thread dedicated to "interesting facebook pages for SciForumers"

 

Here's another example of initials

http://www.facebook.com/pages/W-M-Keck-Observatory/258556413246?v=wall&ref=search

 

yeah, you can't quite quit facebook either..

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they once drove me crazy with their "ooops" error message, so i deactivated and copy pasted the error message to the (reason why you're leaving) box.. they repayed me with a hail of notification spam to my email, which i couldn't turn off until i reactivated my account..and i got hooked again

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but i don't bother with facebook much for a long time now, i found it lame since i came across a better alternative

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This and that

Yeah, I figured it was actually possible. It's just that after five or six tries, I decided it wasn't worth it. I probably wouldn't have ranted about it except, as I blithered to S.A.M., it was just another bit of bullshit in a day filled with small annoyances.

But, no. I don't expect I'll be reactivating my account until they send me an email that shows their system can, indeed, honor my repeated requests.

• • •​

Yeah, I've been looking for an excuse to post it. It just slays me, for several reasons that take a while to explain. Mr. Fish rocks. Although I've mentioned it before, in the old political cartoons thread, his site is called Clowncrack, which for some reason I can't quantify—and therefore, logically, cannoy really exist—suggests a lot about his frame of humor.

 

something like this seems to work:

Tiassa B D Smithers

 

Is there a way to do it without hiding all the apps and friends? Some of them are related to me.

 

They can be hidden individually. You have the option of hiding the specific friend (which will hide all their updates from your newsfeed),or you can hide the specific app....which does not hide ALL apps, just that particular one.

 

I don't like any social websites. I mean why would you need to socialize with anyone online when you could just walk out the door?

 

Selection. You have a special interest of some kind, you find others who share that with you online, not just outside your door.

(you are in a social website right now

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)

 

Correction. This is an informational forum. (That was a joke)

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What about using B-D like the syringes?

 

Maybe the people at Facebook missed a few computer classes?