During last week’s announcement of Facebook Home, did anyone else find themselves thinking: Why the hell do we need this thing?
I’ll hand it to everyone over at Facebook PR, the promo video almost got me! It has a handful of exceptionally good-looking people who are smiling, laughing, cooking, weirdly touching hands … eventually looking at their phones … oh wait, what? What in the hell is this? I was under the impression I was watching the new Lumineers music video.
Oh wait, that’s right: It’s Facebook Home, which is like a Facebook for your
I swear to God, my brain is about to melt out of my ears.
“More Facebook, please! You know, if there’s anything I need, it’s more
The whole idea behind Facebook Home is that you can be using
It’s like taking Ambien and eating the entire contents of your refrigerator without even knowing it; no really, I’m going to make this analogy work. We’re unwittingly consuming without any awareness. It’s not good for us and it’s not helping us and we don’t even know we’re doing it. Facebook has become the empty calories of our lives. And, you don’t even get to have any fun hallucinations from taking it and trying to stay awake. (Yes, that’s a thing. Seriously I haven’t tried it, but it’s real).
It’s not like Facebook hasn’t already made a variety of social situations horrifying. Seriously, every time someone starts a sentence with “Well I saw on
Home is only going to make that happen more, and more immediately. So instead of going to happy hour and discussing out loud all the things you probably have been reading about your friends over the last week, you’d constantly be getting pinged with updates to talk about.
And then, before you know it, where your brain used to be is a giant “Connect” button.
But there’s no denying it, Facebook Home is pretty. The pictures are big, Chat heads are fluid, the cover photo scheme is nice. But it’s lipstick on a pig; a really annoying pig that won’t leave me just a little bit alone. The design is like this close to confusing me into wanting Home, and then I remember how the last thing in this world I need is to use
If I want to use Facebook, I can use
But what really makes me mad is that I’m totally going to try it, dammit, because I’m a slave to the Facebook system (insert some quote from The Matrix here). And now you’ve made me hate myself. Thanks a lot.