Facebook Rant- News Feed Within Your News Feed Edition

This is not my first Facebook rant and I suppose it won't be my last either. But with the new changes that have been made to all facets of the social networking site, including the death of the old news feed (R.I.M.P- rest in mega pixels), I feel as if too much damage has been done to not voice my opinion.

Clearly the elephant in the room is the new, ever scrolling, News Feed within your News Feed that appears on the right side of the screen. You know what I'm talking about, the constantly updating timeline that refuses to disappear no matter how quickly you try to click up or down on the page. I mean doesn't Zuckerberg get that this isn't the god damn New York Stock Exchange and we don't need an up to the second monitor of who 'likes' someones prof pic? This is beyond intrusive, it's unnecessary and it pisses me off. I used to think it was bad enough that everytime you commented on a picture or wrote on someones wall that it would show up for everyone else to see and now you have to add your 'likes' on top of that? Is nothing sacred anymore?

Another change that I'm still baffled by is the home page, or as I like to call it, the area of computer screen formally known as News Feed. At the top of this section their is a rundown called "Top Stories Since You Last Visited", which is exactly like the old feature where you used to be able to click "Top Stories", only now it looks congested and confusing. Apparently you have the option of clicking a gray half box on the upper left hand corner of a "Top Story" if you feel it's not worthy enough to take up such valuable real estate on your run down. Once again, incredibly unnecessary.

If you continue to scroll down from the "Top Stories" you will come across "Recent Stories" and further down "Stories From Earlier Today." To me this does more harm than good. It slows down your browser the deeper you elect to scroll and I'm still for the life of me trying to figure out why the old version of picking between Recent and Top Stories didn't last? I'm all for evolution but not if I feel like the new product is a just a more complicated version of a system that was already working perfectly fine. One last thing before I move on from the feeds- Facebook used to filter out your feeds so that you only saw people that were relevant to your online life (creepy, yes, but also convenient), now it's every man for themselves. I've seen status updates recently from people I don't even remember ever knowing (i.e. the people you friended as a freshman in college) which has prompted to me eliminate some of those people (which is a positive).

Another change that has been made recently is the super size me effect that happens whenever a photo is tagged or uploaded. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, they've made it so that whenever a photo related activity occurs, said photo is displayed 4x bigger than it used to be. I'm sure in three months I won't even remember the old thumbnail days but for now it definitely seems a little too "in your face" for my liking.

And now for the people who inhabit Facebook. Is it just me, or are the people that use Facebook getting dumber and dumber? Maybe it has to do with the influx of adults joining the site that still don't fully grasp the proper online edicate necessary for normal online communication but I can't help but laugh at all the people that are constantly getting trolled into posting stupid shit as their statuses. Take Exhibit A for example:

The girl who posted this status was by no means alone in her actions. In fact I saw no less than 25 other people re-post this very same status last night. Now the fact that all I had to do was type in Amy Bruce on Google and within 3 seconds I found out that it was a hoax from 2007 is besides the point, it's common sense people. For starters- what 7 year old even knows what the words rape, slut and fighting for our country even mean? She also allegedly had a brain tumor from constant beatings, yet someone found time to log on to Facebook and type this shit up? And what kind of bullshit Make A Wish Foundation gimmick would this even be? Incentive based status posting giveaways? Give me a break people and wise the eff up. You got played, plain and simple.

Not don't get me wrong, I am an avid user of Facebook and think that it has forever changed the way people communicate for the better. Chances are many of you that are reading this right now clicked this link from the 2 Man Weave fan page, and I'm thankful that this platform exists to spread material and stay connected. But that doesn't mean that when changes are made that I don't deem for the best, or when people neglect to use the common sense part of their brain that they aren't going to get called out by me. It's a system of checks and balances people and I'm just here to play the role of the regulator.


-fresh (@danye33)