What made Facebook so cool to join is that it was like the college to Myspace’s high school. You didn’t merely make a Facebook account; you graduated from Myspace. The format was cleaner, and so was the content (for the most part). It was a website your grandmother could belong to, something for parents to share pictures with their families. It sounds pretty lame, but that’s what it was. Facebook was designed for that kind of social interaction, and basic social media networking. You used Facebook to keep in touch with those out of reach. Of course, for the last four years (at least in my social circle), the website has transformed from social networking to an advertisement billboard. Not only is it difficult to find posts written by the person who posted it, but it’s also impossible to scroll down your news feed without seeing macros and Internet maymays. Not only is it irritating, but it clogs up your news feed, so that you’re deprived of the content the website was made for in the first place: keeping up with each other.
Running online gags and macros have been popular on the Internet since as far back as I can remember. I think my introduction to them was with the I Can Has Cheezburger? trend, but I know I was late to the party. Looking back on those, they’re pretty cringe-worthy and embarrassing to have enjoyed, but if you don’t like it, you don’t have to visit the website. I don’t often go to Reddit or Tumblr, but when I do, I can easily find the content I’m looking for without having to deal with much else. There’s some form of organization that Facebook lacks. Rather than subreddits, or individual blogs one can follow for certain content, Facebook is an orgy of media. You can’t filter out pages from people or shares from original content. You just have to scroll down and hope to find something of interest, whatever that might be.
There’s also the factor of capitalism in the Facebook content. The images weren’t often created to be funny, but typically they are politically-charged or message-based. Their humor is exclusive to those who agree with the message. That can apply to a lot of humor, I get that, but that stuff should really be segregated into an echo-chamber where its welcome. I don’t have many thoughts on the current election, but I’m sick of seeing “jokes” on either end of the argument. More so than pushing any message, which is definitely an intent but not the one I care to discuss here, is that the people sharing this content are paid to share it. They’re doing it to push their own page. That’s why Facebook pages such as Alice Cooper, Snoop Dogg or any radio station are so aggressive with their shares. It’s free advertising, and each person who in-turn shares the image, video, whatever, is not only condoning the content, but is promoting the page it was lifted from.
I’m not telling people what to share or post on their own Facebook walls. One of my biggest peeves online are those posts about why you shouldn’t post a certain way. All I’m saying is that you should be informed about what you’re posting and the reason it was posted in the first place, because a lot of people allow themselves to be taken advantage of for marketing purposes. Personally, though, I would much rather see what’s up with my family and friends than another f*cking meme that was already stale while I was still in high school.
