Facebook Fatigue
When I signed up to Facebook earlier this year, I did so with hesitation. I don’t really like being THAT well connected with people. At the end of last year, I ditched MSN Messenger, partly because the Mac version of MSN Messenger is pathetic, but also because the stream of messages was becoming a distraction. I would be busy doing something and someone would pop-up with a greeting but no real topic of discussion in mind. I would then, out of politeness, have to think of something to chat about or engage in small-talk. My tolerance wore thin and then vanished. I deleted MSN and haven’t looked back since. Now, my tolerance of Facebook is wearing thin, but for a slightly different reason.
It wasn’t always like this. For the first month or so, I was addicted to Facebook. I very quickly accumilated 60 friends, most of whom I haven’t spoken to in years. But now, I’m seriously considering deleting my account.
Why? Instead of a stream of private messages, I’m getting a stream of invitations. Invitations to become a werewolf, to become a vampire, to throw food at someone, to take quizzes on a variety of topics, to judge one of my personal attributes against someone elses, to send ‘Booze Mail’, to install a virtual fishtank on my profile page, etc. I’m sick of it! Each and every one of these applications serve no purpose. They are pointless! Well, that’s not strictly true. They do a very good job of clogging up profile pages, slowing down load times and making them look overcrowded. I simply cannot understand why anyone would want such applications on their profiles and also, why people seem to think I would want them too. It would be alright if I could just ignore them, but the alerts stay on the homepage until you either accept the invitation or ignore it. Some invitations get sent to my email inbox! So, in order to ignore these invitations, I have to click ‘ignore’ on facebook AND I have to log into GMail and delete the email. I’ve ‘ignored’ every single invitations I’ve received so far since signing up, yet my ‘friends’ still continue to bombard me with them.
People are calling it ‘Facebook Fatigue’. I’ve got it! Well and truly.
