OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH – MARCH 2016
‘My Facebook password was cracked, now I have to change my birthday’. Duh! Don’t worry, the NSA, GCHQ, the Illuminati and no doubt Daésh will have already stored all your exploits, and rated your ‘intelligence cachet’ which is PC for dumbness. Yahoo is gasping its last breath and as big as it is, Facebook addiction will wane as does all other fads the moment something interestingly new and positively inane comes along. Quite what that might be is anyone’s guess but it won’t be a re-born ‘MySpace’ which actually required individual creativity.
With data bandwidths and speeds begging to get better, perhaps some web-based form of self-made tedious ‘Reality TV’ upload might struggle to emerge; that is if our friendly politicians don’t continue to try and ban everything; which questions the very soul and purpose of a smart-phone in the first place. Maybe those will be banned too and Bahrain will have its own unique identity like Cuba, where cars from the 1950s are the only vehicles and we will be toddling around with an old 1994 Nokia 232 refurbished forever. At risk of thoroughly offending our deluded great friends, nice people and dear colleagues in the broadcast media; let’s face it, in Bahrain we really have such nonexistent broadcast platforms drowned by blind incompetence so what else can we do? Then again, in utter despair there’s nonsensical talk of un-clarified laws being introduced, if not already in place, “Banning the upload of video and audio”. So what, we can still log on to Facebook, Instagram or whatever, but only as voyeurs?
Google + is out as that is the great failure which we are all forced to join but so few ever use. Facebook has overtaken entire lives, but at least you and only you are responsible for exposing yourself on it, whereas Google + exposes your entire life to the world if you don’t disable the automatic upload and share buttons which you had no idea about and which are set to ‘on’ by default. It eats your bandwidth as saucy ‘selfies’, tasteless ‘Whatsapp’ exchanges, kinks and classifieds are Androided to the cloud with you utterly oblivious. Data harvesting in full swing, your profile has been established and depending what pix were posted on Google +, ‘targeted advertising’ pushes you a message offering you an Anne Summers enlargement kit or worse.
‘Behind every successful person there’s a deactivated Facebook account’. Endless regurgitation of the same videos and banners and you get possessive and post; ‘I already posted that last year’, as if you were the intellectual and originator! Inane comments and pictures of your breakfast gets 250 likes, but post a riveting, well-crafted missive about psychopaths in our midst and only your sister gives you a single like. Low self-esteem, depression, even suicide could prevail. ‘Death by Facebook’ will be written into law within the next ten years for sure. Besides, before Social Media, did we ever photograph what we were about to eat, then run around and get the film developed making 2,000 copies and sending the picture off to all your friends? Umm…..no!
Then on a roll with your wit or compassion, like a berk you respond to a friend’s post without reading the previous comments. Sadly 40 other friends just posted exactly the same thing before you. Not to offend, each receives a ‘like’ of course.
‘What kills you makes you stronger’. Ugh? Even amoeba has a voice because some illogical collection of words perceived to be cognitive were posted elsewhere so it must be right, so share it! ‘Wow, all my friends had birthdays this year’. Really, what about next year? Then there’s the deluded brave heart; ‘oo really fancies this geezer’ so posts; ‘I love sniffing ‘iz colon when ‘ee comes in the room, I fink its Brut’ Thankfully millions of animal lover videos make up for the dirge and wealth of bad grammar, spelling and otiose Facebook content which we are all addicted to. To remove yourself from this inanity sees cold turkey-virtual isolation set in. Your assumed importance to life soon nags – so log-on you must. But, as the smarter among us disable our Facebook accounts this targeted advertising will still be pushing new caravan accessories to the trailer park brigade or special offers for Walmart intellectuals and Zuckerberg will still be a godzillionaire .
The ‘who’s been looking at you’ feature has yet to be implemented on Facebook deliberately (Linkedin do it for a fee), otherwise all the virtual perving of your pix would stop. Yes, Facebook can be cruel and lonely too if you have so few friends and Facebook keeps reminding you. Then, when no amount of make-up is going to cut the mustard, as in this wall post from someone called Sharron.
Darren Smith: ‘You look sexy…’
Sharron: ‘Thank you Dad’.
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