I am a relatively unproud member of the most popular social networking website of my time, 'Facebook'. There are some reason why I am fond of 'Facebook' and a thousand reasons why I'm not.
I like 'Facebook' because it makes it really easy to communicate with my friends, it's free and it's convenient. There are also fun little things that keep me entertained on it, like the 'Graffiti' application their version of messenger and some of the different games.
One of the reasons why I don't like 'Facebook' is because I am forced to use it. Because my friends rely on it to plan and invite people to outings and to report what they are doing on the weekend, if I don't use it, I'll never know whats going on with my friends and I'll never get invited to anything. My choice is to use 'Facebook', or lose my friends.
Another thing I hate about 'Facebook' is that, using the information it has collected from me without me realizing it, it can now target me with the perfect advertising it has formulated from it.
I recently changed my profile so that it does not give away any information about my political and religious views, who I'm interested in, or my relationship status, but simply based on my age and gender I still get millions of advertisements targeted at me everyday.
Things like diet plans, makeup and birth control are ones that I see quite often. I feel deeply offended when I think about all the young girls on 'Facebook' who are forced to peer at a diet plan called 'The Model Diet Plan' every day, more than once. Why doesn't 'Facebook' just put up an add that says “YOU'LL NEVER BE WHAT SOCIETY WANTS YOU TO BE, GO ON A DIET AND BUY SOME MAKEUP.” That's what I feel like they're telling me anyway.
On a similar note, I would like to talk about another social networking site that makes me want to throw up. This is an online dating service called, “Beautiful People”.
The purpose of the website is to create a dating environment where all of the members are 'beautiful', so that they can all be confident that they will be dating 'beautiful people' like themselves. If this doesn't make you sick enough, I conducted an experiment to see how you actually get accepted as a member. I submitted a picture of myself and they told me that I would be critiqued for 48 hours by members of the opposite sex on the website. If they thought I was fit to be a member, they would notify me.
So, I was going to have unknown, supposedly 'beautiful' men rate whether I was beautiful enough for their tastes and if I was not, then I would be rejected. The first thing that went through my head was, “Why would I care what someone on this website thinks of me? If they are on here they must be a superficial asshole anyway.” I then immediately deleted my profile.
I don't understand why things like this exist. Are human beings really this shallow and insecure? I guess the world is a strange place.
Works Cited
Beautiful People.com. 2001-2008. Available: http://beta.beautifulpeople.com/Splash
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