Facebook is making waves - or, more appropriately, ripples - by adding a few new features to its comments section. You know, the comments section: the place where people who, in sixth grade, were rejected by Jenny Hempstead when they asked her to go to the spring jamboree dance and they never got over it - the place where those folks go to talk under cover of anonymity. Now you've got four brand-spanking new features in your beloved comments section to warm the cockles of your adolescent heart:
1.) User Network - This addition allows your location, school or company name to show up under whatever comments you leave. This component should be a windfall for pedophiles, stalkers, and flunkies tasked with finding dirt on their work colleagues. Ah, police state creep: you've got to love how we're edging ever closer to zero privacy.
2.) As of this post, there is no #2 featured on All Things Facebook, it looks like some sort of error. So far, this is my favorite improvement to Facebook.
3.) Comment Voting - As if our society doesn't drill into us enough that we must, against all odds, be liked, I give you the Comment Voting feature. It appears that people can give positive or negative votes to comments they like or dislike. Or something. This, to me, is akin to neighbors fingering neighbors in Post World War II Communist Russia.
Ok, really - I don't give a monkey's shoe shine what Patty B. thinks of my negative comment re: David's Burning Man picture. Me: "Ok David, I get it: you went to your first Burning Man. How many pictures of you must I see with your shirt off hot boxing it with a bunch of hippies?" Patty B.: down arrow. Really, Patty B.? A downward arrow? Do you have to listen to my friend David go on and on about how "lunar orbit-like" his first Burning Man was?? I think not. So butt out.
4.) Feedback Rating and Comment Count - The only positive glimmer I can see out of this whole "improvement" business is that the Feedback Rating whatchamadoober might actually cut down on spam (somehow; don't ask me how). Your Feedback Rating will show you the percentage of comment votes that were positive.
Again, as so many times in life, I can hear the drill sergeant's voice from "Full Metal Jacket" ringing in my ears: "What is your major malfunction, Private Pile? Did your mother not show you enough affection when you were a child?!" I truly feel that things like feedback ratings have been installed because of a clamoring from the attention-starved crowd.
The Comment Count shows how many comments a commenter left in the comment thread. Is it really just a coincidence that the words "comment" and "communist" sound so similar? Discuss.
5.) Threaded Comments - Zeroes can now have sub-conversations with each other. Cue the Psycho music. Ree! Ree! Ree! Ree!
Pflupfy's bottom line: whether or not Facebook had installed these upgrades, the world would've marched on to its happy hoofbeats.
Pflupfy's Rating: F-
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