{"id":7356,"date":"2011-01-23T13:18:40","date_gmt":"2011-01-23T17:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=7356"},"modified":"2011-01-23T14:28:47","modified_gmt":"2011-01-23T18:28:47","slug":"john-scalzi-on-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/01\/23\/john-scalzi-on-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"John Scalzi on Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Scalzi has been online for a long time. He even “handrolled his own html code and then uploaded it using UNIX commands because he was excited to have his own Web site, and back in 1993 that\u2019s how you did it.” He’s not excited about Facebook. Not at all<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A friend of mine noted recently that I seemed a little antagonistic about Facebook recently — mostly on my Facebook account, which is some irony for you — and wanted to know what I had against it. The answer is simple enough: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick. It\u2019s a dumbed-down version of the functionality the Web already had, just not all in one place at one time.<\/p>\n

Facebook has made substandard versions of everything on the Web, bundled it together and somehow found itself being lauded \ufefffor it, as if AOL, Friendster and MySpace had never managed the same slightly embarrassing trick. Facebook had the advantage of not being saddled with AOL\u2019s last-gen baggage, Friendster\u2019s too-early-for-its-moment-ness, or MySpace\u2019s aggressive ugliness, and it had the largely accidental advantage of being upmarket first — it was originally limited to college students and gaining some cachet therein — before it let in the rabble. But the idea that it\u2019s doing something better, new or innovative is largely PR and faffery. Zuckerberg is in fact not a genius; he\u2019s an ambitious nerd who was in the right place at the right time, and was apparently willing to be a ruthless dick when he had to be. Now he has billions because of it. Good for him. It doesn\u2019t make me like his monstrosity any better.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

I look at Facebook and what I mostly see are a bunch of seemingly arbitrary and annoying functionality choices. A mail system that doesn\u2019t have a Bcc function doesn\u2019t belong in the 21st Century. Facebook shouldn\u2019t be telling me how many \u201cfriends\u201d I should have, especially when there\u2019s clearly no technological impetus for it. Its grasping attempts to get its hooks into every single thing I do feels like being groped by an overly obnoxious salesman. Its general ethos that I need to get over the concept of privacy makes me want to shove a camera lens up Zuckerberg\u2019s left nostril 24 hours a day and ask him if he\u2019d like for his company to rethink that position. Basically there\u2019s very little Facebook does, either as a technological platform or as a company, that doesn\u2019t remind me that \u201cbanal mediocrity\u201d is apparently the highest accolade one can aspire to at that particular organization.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have a Facebook account, but only really check it every few days. Twitter, on the other hand I’ve found to be an excellent tool for a blogger: lots and lots of interesting stuff has come to my attention first through a Twitter update from journalists, bloggers, celebrities, and just ordinary folks. And it doesn’t try to worm its way into everything I do.<\/p>\n

Some folks felt John was being too harsh on Facebook users<\/em>, rather than the site itself, so he posted an update<\/a> later that day:<\/p>\n

\n

* In comments here and elsewhere there was interpretation of me saying that Facebook wasn\u2019t for someone like me, but it was for normal<\/em> people as a)<\/strong> a way to signal that I am awesome<\/em> and smart<\/em> and also awesome<\/em>, and b)<\/strong> normal people are stupid and suck, and that\u2019s why they use Facebook. Yeah, no. It\u2019s not for me because the functionality doesn\u2019t map well for what I want to do or have for my online experience, and \u201cnormal\u201d in this case doesn\u2019t mean \u201cstupid people who suck,\u201d it means \u201cpeople who don\u2019t want to make the time\/energy commitment to run their own site.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s always a problem with written work . . . some people will misunderstand or misinterpret what you’re saying — deliberately or otherwise — and it’s difficult to make something so clear that it can’t be twisted. Did I say difficult<\/em>? I should have said impossible<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Scalzi has been online for a long time. He even “handrolled his own html code and then uploaded it using UNIX commands because he was excited to have his own Web site, and back in 1993 that\u2019s how you did it.” He’s not excited about Facebook. Not at all: A friend of mine noted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[86,391,58,310],"class_list":["post-7356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-criticism","tag-facebook","tag-internet","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1UE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7356"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7359,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7356\/revisions\/7359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}