Socialcynics

The idea is simple enough - make fun of people whose lives are so dependent on Facebook, and vice versa, that they share that which they should not. Not now and not ever, and certainly not in public.

Poking a bit of harmless fun at people who aren't likely to respond or able to do so, is not a new idea, even though the authors of this site give the impression that they're on to the most amusing concept since, well, Twitter. It's been done, guys. Probably since the earliest man made fun of his mate's cave paintings behind his back, and probably with better cause. So let's move on from that and ask what else is new about this one?

Cynicism is the excuse for exposing many Facebook users as selfish and self-interested, as if they were attempting to be anything else, which by and large, they aren't. By and large, they're posting personal thoughts about themselves and their friends to FB and other social networks because it makes them feel better, and not because they're desperate to make social statements of any significance or express their angst over the state of the world in general.

Should we be surprised at this? Are the cynics being useful by attempting to prove that most of the output of social networks is driven by self-interest? Didn't we know this, already? Does it matter?

A teenage girl who posts that she can't imagine life getting any worse gets to be called a "b itch" because she hasn't commented on the disaster in Japan instead. Wait, do I hear anyone laughing?

Even if the original postings were consistently hilarious, which wouldn't be entirely unlikely given the vast numbers of FB users and their demographics, the comment isn't. It's more reminiscent of schoolyard bullying and name-calling than anything else and that's also been done before. Many times. Perhaps it's intended to be witty, in which case the authors fail to note that wit implies intelligence and imagination, little of either being present here. Perhaps, though, it's intended to be edgy and controversial, in exactly the way that Facebook isn't, but who cares?

The irony is that the site itself is an example of the self-interest that it vilifies, serving no purpose other than to keep the contributors and authors amused by their own cleverness.

And that's been done, too.