I Knew It. I'm Surrounded By Assholes! -Dark Helmet
What follows is turned into a rant about a pet-pieve of mine, after a lot of set up. Since its a rant, if you choose not to read it I will not be bothered.
Unless you'd all like to hear about Magic, programming, rats, and poor sleep schedules, I have little else to post about.
Everyone had(has) something to say about Facebook's News Feed. I'm no exception, but I'm going to do a service to all of you and not spread mine. (Available upon request)
What I would like to do is gripe about people posting stupid things on forums. High Schoolers may be to blame for some of it, but we must accept that some college students are really this dumb.
The major way Facebook users gave feedback on the new feature was the creation of Facebook groups protesting it. These groups ranged from ill conceived, "Facebook is NO BUENO", to the most well thought out and successful (that I am aware of) , "Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)". They clearly stated their goals, their reasons, directed everyone to Facebooks built-in feedback feature and gained 750,000 members because of all that. Unfortunately, its impossible to accumulate this many people near a link to forums without the forums degrading.
A trip through the threads with the most posts is either highly amusing or depressing, depending on how much you care about the human race.
Thankfully, there are actually a few threads on topic:
"****Problems with News Feed Privacy Options - Official Discussion Topic****"
"Response from Facebook"
"A Way to Keep News/Mini Feeds and make Everyone Happy (well most everyone)"
"Quit Bitching"
Some threads would be irrelevant or useless on nearly any forum of nearly any topic:
"new counting game 1 to 10,000"
"Texas is so much better than your state."
"rate the person above you as sexy, okay, or i'd fuck!"
Off topic, but not inherently hurtful:
"Guitar is the best instrument in the world"
Numerous topics that never work well on forums:
"Free Palestine"
"Abortion"
"God isn't real and religion only exists to oppress societies around the world"
"GAY MARRIAGE IS WRONG AND IT IS A SIN"
And then someone goes and posts this:
"The Holocaust Never Happened!!!!"
I believe Godwin's Law to be true, and am very grateful to
Grantisu for introducing me to it. This is not an example of a case where it was correct. This is a case where something related is going on. Godwin's Law is cited as evidence that a discussion is no longer productive. I have concluded that the forums for this group are no longer productive, using similar reasoning to that on which Godwin's Law is based. (I don't feel like working out the details, but I doubt I'll get a lot of argument. At the least, the forums have devolved into general discussion. )
But really, that doesn't bother me. I don't like seeing forums or chat areas degrade into stupidity, but its going to happen and theres not a lot we can do about it; every conversation eventually degrades into things you don't want to talk about, then then you walk away and it ends itself. (Walking away, figuratively, is what you should do when you see an unhealthy forum. It will die when left alone.) What does bother me is when people commit the greatest form of hypocrisy I'm aware of. Read the following thread titles:
"BAN Facebook Started"
"BanFacebook.com - Real"
I'm not necessarily bothered by people who complain about parts of Facebook on Facebook. Such things can be constructive criticism, provide useful feedback, and result in a better product for everyone. Thats exactly what everyone did with the news feed. What someone has done is to promote the ending of the services Facebook provides by using the services Facebook provides. They complained about Facebook as a whole on Facebook.
My hate for this act comes from a worse act which is identical but for one detail. Imagine if you can a number of chatting services with some other features thrown on that cost money to use each month. There are users which subscribe to these services, use the other features for a while, then get pissed off and use the service to complain about the service or the company that provides it. In a nutshell, they pay money each month to complain about how little they are getting for the money they pay each month and they do so to the annoyance of everyone who is listening. The flawed logic in this act is clear, and I will not rant much further about it. Know only that if I could legally give out Darwin Awards, I would line up these people as the first recipients.
I try hard each day, and would like everyone else to do likeise, not to act stupidly. No one is perfect and we all screw up now and then, but we should at least try.
Unless you'd all like to hear about Magic, programming, rats, and poor sleep schedules, I have little else to post about.
Everyone had(has) something to say about Facebook's News Feed. I'm no exception, but I'm going to do a service to all of you and not spread mine. (Available upon request)
What I would like to do is gripe about people posting stupid things on forums. High Schoolers may be to blame for some of it, but we must accept that some college students are really this dumb.
The major way Facebook users gave feedback on the new feature was the creation of Facebook groups protesting it. These groups ranged from ill conceived, "Facebook is NO BUENO", to the most well thought out and successful (that I am aware of) , "Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)". They clearly stated their goals, their reasons, directed everyone to Facebooks built-in feedback feature and gained 750,000 members because of all that. Unfortunately, its impossible to accumulate this many people near a link to forums without the forums degrading.
A trip through the threads with the most posts is either highly amusing or depressing, depending on how much you care about the human race.
Thankfully, there are actually a few threads on topic:
"****Problems with News Feed Privacy Options - Official Discussion Topic****"
"Response from Facebook"
"A Way to Keep News/Mini Feeds and make Everyone Happy (well most everyone)"
"Quit Bitching"
Some threads would be irrelevant or useless on nearly any forum of nearly any topic:
"new counting game 1 to 10,000"
"Texas is so much better than your state."
"rate the person above you as sexy, okay, or i'd fuck!"
Off topic, but not inherently hurtful:
"Guitar is the best instrument in the world"
Numerous topics that never work well on forums:
"Free Palestine"
"Abortion"
"God isn't real and religion only exists to oppress societies around the world"
"GAY MARRIAGE IS WRONG AND IT IS A SIN"
And then someone goes and posts this:
"The Holocaust Never Happened!!!!"
I believe Godwin's Law to be true, and am very grateful to
Grantisu for introducing me to it. This is not an example of a case where it was correct. This is a case where something related is going on. Godwin's Law is cited as evidence that a discussion is no longer productive. I have concluded that the forums for this group are no longer productive, using similar reasoning to that on which Godwin's Law is based. (I don't feel like working out the details, but I doubt I'll get a lot of argument. At the least, the forums have devolved into general discussion. )
But really, that doesn't bother me. I don't like seeing forums or chat areas degrade into stupidity, but its going to happen and theres not a lot we can do about it; every conversation eventually degrades into things you don't want to talk about, then then you walk away and it ends itself. (Walking away, figuratively, is what you should do when you see an unhealthy forum. It will die when left alone.) What does bother me is when people commit the greatest form of hypocrisy I'm aware of. Read the following thread titles:
"BAN Facebook Started"
"BanFacebook.com - Real"
I'm not necessarily bothered by people who complain about parts of Facebook on Facebook. Such things can be constructive criticism, provide useful feedback, and result in a better product for everyone. Thats exactly what everyone did with the news feed. What someone has done is to promote the ending of the services Facebook provides by using the services Facebook provides. They complained about Facebook as a whole on Facebook.
My hate for this act comes from a worse act which is identical but for one detail. Imagine if you can a number of chatting services with some other features thrown on that cost money to use each month. There are users which subscribe to these services, use the other features for a while, then get pissed off and use the service to complain about the service or the company that provides it. In a nutshell, they pay money each month to complain about how little they are getting for the money they pay each month and they do so to the annoyance of everyone who is listening. The flawed logic in this act is clear, and I will not rant much further about it. Know only that if I could legally give out Darwin Awards, I would line up these people as the first recipients.
I try hard each day, and would like everyone else to do likeise, not to act stupidly. No one is perfect and we all screw up now and then, but we should at least try.