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Discuss this story Discuss this story Print This Post Print This Post E-Mail This Article Published on Thursday, January 17, 2008 by the Guardian/UK With Friends Like These … Facebook has 59 million users - and 2 million new ones join each week. But you won’t catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information - not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site. by Tom Hodgkinson
I despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business describes itself as “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”. But hang on. Why on God’s earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?
0117 08 1 2And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.
Facebook appeals to a kind of vanity and self-importance in us, too. If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in order to get sex or approval. (”I like Facebook,” said another friend. “I got a shag out of it.”) It also encourages a disturbing competitiveness around friendship: it seems that with friends today, quality counts for nothing and quantity is king. The more friends you have, the better you are. You are “popular”, in the sense much loved in American high schools. Witness the cover line on Dennis Publishing’s new Facebook magazine: “How To Double Your Friends List.”
It seems, though, that I am very much alone in my hostility. At the time of writing Facebook claims 59 million active users, including 7 million in the UK, Facebook’s third-biggest customer after the US and Canada. That’s 59 million suckers, all of whom have volunteered their ID card information and consumer preferences to an American business they know nothing about. Right now, 2 million new people join each week. At the present rate of growth, Facebook will have more than 200 million active users by this time next year. And I would predict that, if anything, its rate of growth will accelerate over the coming months. As its spokesman Chris Hughes says: “It’s embedded itself to an extent where it’s hard to get rid of.”
All of the above would have been enough to make me reject Facebook for ever. But there are more reasons to hate it. Many more.
Facebook is a well-funded project, and the people behind the funding, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, have a clearly thought out ideology that they are hoping to spread around the world. Facebook is one manifestation of this ideology. Like PayPal before it, it is a social experiment, an expression of a particular kind of neoconservative libertarianism. On Facebook, you can be free to be who you want to be, as long as you don’t mind being bombarded by adverts for the world’s biggest brands. As with PayPal, national boundaries are a thing of the past.
Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook, and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners (more on him later). Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook when Harvard students Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz went to meet him in San Francisco in June 2004, soon after they had launched the site. Thiel now reportedly owns 7% of Facebook, which, at Facebook’s current valuation of $15bn, would be worth more than $1bn. There is much debate on who exactly were the original co-founders of Facebook, but whoever they were, Zuckerberg is the only one left on the board, although Hughes and Moskowitz still work for the company.
Thiel is widely regarded in Silicon Valley and in the US venture capital scene as a libertarian genius. He is the co-founder and CEO of the virtual banking system PayPal, which he sold to Ebay for $1.5bn, taking $55m for himself. He also runs a £3bn hedge fund called Clarium Capital Management and a venture capital fund called Founders Fund. Bloomberg Markets magazine recently called him “one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the country”. He has made money by betting on rising oil prices and by correctly predicting that the dollar would weaken. He and his absurdly wealthy Silicon Valley mates have recently been labelled “The PayPal Mafia” by Fortune magazine, whose reporter also observed that Thiel has a uniformed butler and a $500,000 McLaren supercar. Thiel is also a chess master and intensely competitive. He has been known to sweep the chessmen off the table in a fury when losing. And he does not apologise for this hyper-competitveness, saying: “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”
But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist. He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist. A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the “multiculture” led to a lessening of individual freedoms. While a student at Stanford, Thiel founded a rightwing journal, still up and running, called The Stanford Review - motto: Fiat Lux (”Let there be light”). Thiel is a member of TheVanguard.Org, an internet-based neoconservative pressure group that was set up to attack MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group that works on the web. Thiel calls himself “way libertarian”.
TheVanguard is run by one Rod D Martin, a philosopher-capitalist whom Thiel greatly admires. On the site, Thiel says: “Rod is one of our nation’s leading minds in the creation of new and needed ideas for public policy. He possesses a more complete understanding of America than most executives have of their own businesses.”
This little taster from their website will give you an idea of their vision for the world: “TheVanguard.Org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us.” Their aim is to promote policies that will “reshape America and the globe”. TheVanguard describes its politics as “Reaganite/Thatcherite”. The chairman’s message says: “Today we’ll teach MoveOn [the liberal website], Hillary and the leftwing media some lessons they never imagined.”
So, Thiel’s politics are not in doubt. What about his philosophy? I listened to a podcast of an address Thiel gave about his ideas for the future. His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes’ famous characterization of life as “nasty, brutish and short”, and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things. Thiel says that PayPal was motivated by this belief: that you can find value not in real manufactured objects, but in the relations between human beings. PayPal was a way of moving money around the world with no restriction. Bloomberg Markets puts it like this: “For Thiel, PayPal was all about freedom: it would enable people to skirt currency controls and move money around the globe.”
Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.
Thiel’s philosophical mentor is one René Girard of Stanford University, proponent of a theory of human behavior called mimetic desire. Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep-like and will copy one another without much reflection. The theory would also seem to be proved correct in the case of Thiel’s virtual worlds: the desired object is irrelevant; all you need to know is that human beings will tend to move in flocks. Hence financial bubbles. Hence the enormous popularity of Facebook. Girard is a regular at Thiel’s intellectual soirees. What you don’t hear about in Thiel’s philosophy, by the way, are old-fashioned real-world concepts such as art, beauty, love, pleasure and truth.
The internet is immensely appealing to neocons such as Thiel because it promises a certain sort of freedom in human relations and in business, freedom from pesky national laws, national boundaries and suchlike. The internet opens up a world of free trade and laissez-faire expansion. Thiel also seems to approve of offshore tax havens, and claims that 40% of the world’s wealth resides in places such as Vanuatu, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Barbados. I think it’s fair to say that Thiel, like Rupert Murdoch, is against tax. He also likes the globalization of digital culture because it makes the banking overlords hard to attack: “You can’t have a workers’ revolution to take over a bank if the bank is in Vanuatu,” he says.
If life in the past was nasty, brutish and short, then in the future Thiel wants to make it much longer, and to this end he has also invested in a firm that is exploring life-extension technologies. He has pledged £3.5m to a Cambridge-based gerontologist called Aubrey de Grey, who is searching for the key to immortality. Thiel is also on the board of advisers of something called the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. From its fantastical website, the following: “The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies … heading in this direction … Artificial Intelligence … direct brain-computer interfaces … genetic engineering … different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence.”
So by his own admission, Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls “nature”, and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer.
The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which “identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions”.
The US defense department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. “We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries,” defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. “We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts.” In-Q-Tel’s first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and - with Breyer - board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: “She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century.”
Now even if you don’t buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist program crossed with a massive information-gathering tool, there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius. Some net nerds have suggested that its $15bn valuation is excessive, but I would argue that if anything that is too modest. Its scale really is dizzying, and the potential for growth is virtually limitless. “We want everyone to be able to use Facebook,” says the impersonal voice of Big Brother on the website. I’ll bet they do. It is Facebook’s enormous potential that led Microsoft to buy 1.6% for $240m. A recent rumor says that Asian investor Lee Ka-Shing, said to be the ninth richest man in the world, has bought 0.4% of Facebook for $60m.
The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the program. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favorite consumer objects. Once in receipt of this vast database of human beings, Facebook then simply has to sell the information back to advertisers, or, as Zuckerberg puts it in a recent blog post, “to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web”. And indeed, this is precisely what’s happening. On November 6 last year, Facebook announced that 12 global brands had climbed on board. They included Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Sony Pictures and Condé Nast. All trained in marketing bullshit of the highest order, their representatives made excited comments along the following lines:
“With Facebook Ads, our brands can become a part of the way users communicate and interact on Facebook,” said Carol Kruse, vice president, global interactive marketing, the Coca-Cola Company.
“We view this as an innovative way to cultivate relationships with millions of Facebook users by enabling them to interact with Blockbuster in convenient, relevant and entertaining ways,” said Jim Keyes, Blockbuster chairman and CEO. “This is beyond creating advertising impressions. This is about Blockbuster participating in the community of the consumer so that, in return, consumers feel motivated to share the benefits of our brand with their friends.”
“Share” is Facebookspeak for “advertise”. Sign up to Facebook and you become a free walking, talking advert for Blockbuster or Coke, extolling the virtues of these brands to your friends. We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships.
Now, by comparision with Facebook, newspapers, for example, begin to look hopelessly outdated as a business model. A newspaper sells advertising space to businesses looking to sell stuff to their readers. But the system is far less sophisticated than Facebook for two reasons. One is that newspapers have to put up with the irksome expense of paying journalists to provide the content. Facebook gets its content for free. The other is that Facebook can target advertising with far greater precision than a newspaper. Admit on Facebook that your favorite film is This Is Spinal Tap, and when a Spinal Tap-esque movie comes out, you can be sure that they’ll be sending ads your way.
It’s true that Facebook recently got into hot water with its Beacon advertising program. Users were notified that one of their friends had made a purchase at certain online shops; 46,000 users felt that this level of advertising was intrusive, and signed a petition called “Facebook! Stop invading my privacy!” to say so. Zuckerberg apologized on his company blog. He has written that they have now changed the system from “opt-out” to “opt-in”. But I suspect that this little rebellion about being so ruthlessly commodified will soon be forgotten: after all, there was a national outcry by the civil liberties movement when the idea of a police force was mooted in the UK in the mid 19th century.
Futhermore, have you Facebook users ever actually read the privacy policy? It tells you that you don’t have much privacy. Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn’t it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK’s? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers.
Now, you may, like Thiel and the other new masters of the cyberverse, find this social experiment tremendously exciting. Here at last is the Enlightenment state longed for since the Puritans of the 17th century sailed away to North America, a world where everyone is free to express themselves as they please, according to who is watching. National boundaries are a thing of the past and everyone cavorts together in freewheeling virtual space. Nature has been conquered through man’s boundless ingenuity. Yes, and you may decide to send genius investor Thiel all your money, and certainly you’ll be waiting impatiently for the public flotation of the unstoppable Facebook.
Or you might reflect that you don’t really want to be part of this heavily-funded program to create an arid global virtual republic, where your own self and your relationships with your friends are converted into commodities on sale to giant global brands. You may decide that you don’t want to be part of this takeover bid for the world.
For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books. Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven’t read Keats’ Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don’t want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It’s free, it’s easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it’s called talking.
Facebook’s privacy policy
Just for fun, try substituting the words ‘Big Brother’ whenever you read the word ‘Facebook’
1 We will advertise at you
“When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features.”
2 You can’t delete anything
“When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.”
3 Anyone can glance at your intimate confessions
“… we cannot and do not guarantee that user content you post on the site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your user content.”
4 Our marketing profile of you will be unbeatable
“Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg, photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.”
5 Opting out doesn’t mean opting out
“Facebook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications.”
6 The CIA may look at the stuff when they feel like it
“By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States … We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.”
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
― danbunny, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:40 (eighteen years ago)
nobody who uses any social networking site actually gives a shit about privacy, though
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:42 (eighteen years ago)
This is just a mashup of the Lee Siegel book with every Privacy Statement / T&Cs ever
― nabisco, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:43 (eighteen years ago)
see also: tons of alarming editorials from three years ago about how GOOGLE READS YOUR G-MAIL
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:44 (eighteen years ago)
we've already talked about this toryboy cunt, but thanks for letting us in on the shocking news that internet billionaires aren't actually socialist militants.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:44 (eighteen years ago)
i would hope neocons are involved,i dont want no hippies on my friends list
― danbunny, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:45 (eighteen years ago)
I have another long rant about how this is all self-inflicted social devolution and "privacy" such as it is represents a very easy trade-off for most people when faced with the alternative of only interacting with coworkers and housemates and random jerks at bars, especially when the only friends you ever remember having begin using a specific means of communication and leave you out of the loop
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:52 (eighteen years ago)
TLDR
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 20:55 (eighteen years ago)
-- El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:42 (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
^^^
Also, don't tell them shit you don't want them to know. It's only theirs to share if you give it to them. HAY OMG THEY IS GIVIN OUT MY PERSONAL PRIVET PHOEN NUMBAR etc.
― Autumn Almanac, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 21:17 (eighteen years ago)
It seems that one of the things giving me the most joy in my life is laughing at douchebags like the dude who wrote this article.
― HI DERE, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 21:20 (eighteen years ago)
Of course, if they didn't do this, and he lost 3 months worth of photos and no one had a backup, he'd be screaming. Can't win.
― Trayce, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 23:01 (eighteen years ago)
Ummm... I only got past the first paragraph, but jesus what a plonker. It's as if he had a look at one teenager's badly-put-together MySpace profile and then decided that that is what the whole of the internet is like.
This particularly was enough to make me stop reading:
And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.
Yes, and television rots your brains. We're already chained to our desks at work (although I'm sure Tom is above all that work malarkey) so why not chat to our mates and organise a weekend piss up over the internet while we're at it? Such a flawed argument.
― the next grozart, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 23:46 (eighteen years ago)
so basically what this article is saying is that the venture capitalists behind facebook are free-market capitalists. There's a shocker.
― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 23:51 (eighteen years ago)
don't tell them shit you don't want them to know.
urgent and fucking key, cannot be repeated enough times (for some people, apparently)
― kenan, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 23:54 (eighteen years ago)
although I'm sure Tom is above all that work malarkey
what the fuck is this?
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 23:57 (eighteen years ago)
MySpace Tom, I think.
― HI DERE, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 23:57 (eighteen years ago)
Plus, fuck it - networking sites are what you make of them. If it becomes a popularity contest then that's a reflection on you. If you use it to contact close friends, to get back in touch with old friends and maybe even form closer relationships with people you wouldn't normally get the chance to IRL, then more power to that. I've made more proper 'real-life' friends since the advent of social networking sites, simply due to the overcoming of social barriers that occurs when you add an acquaintance (say someone at work, or someone you had a good conversation with in the pub). Once added, they're more likely to say hello to you again. It's better for organising a social event than spending £20 texting everybody on your mobile phone. And if you want to be dumb and leave all your credit card details on there, then that's your own stupid fault.
Scanning the rest of the article, it seems that all it is is a rant about how the makers of FB are rich, capitalistic moneygrubbers. As Enriquit says, so fucking what?
I don't know much about Tom Hodgkinson. I did read a bit of his "How To Be Idle" book and while I semi-enjoyed it, it also seemed pretty myopic blinkered "Oh why do people bother going to work? Aren't they silly! You silly dorks going to work every day!" and never really explaining how one is supposed to, you know, eat and pay rent and stuff without it (save a massive trustfund of course).
― the next grozart, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:01 (eighteen years ago)
-- El Tomboto, Wednesday, 23 January 2008 23:57 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link
This is the same Tom Hodgkinson who is editor of the Idler, right?
http://watch.windsofchange.net/pics/2006/cheese1024x768_s.jpg
― blueski, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:02 (eighteen years ago)
The marks he's talking about - the people who'd define their Facebook profile in terms of consumer desires and shit - are completely oblivious about privacy and probably enjoy having ads tailored to their desire.
The deepest info the assholes are going to get from my Facebook profile is that my favorite Stooges song is "No Fun."
― milo z, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:04 (eighteen years ago)
lol libz, watch yr back
8^7
― Arms, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:09 (eighteen years ago)
Hello, Milo! Have you heard the new Stooges record, entitled "We're Embarrassing Now"? You can buy it at Amazon, you know.
― kenan, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:09 (eighteen years ago)
2 097 152
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:10 (eighteen years ago)
his brand of capitalism might be cool in that ideologically raged fools shouldn't survive in competition.
― Arms, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:11 (eighteen years ago)
I do like that one of the Evil Libertarian Venture Capitalists is on the board of Marvel Comics. Good work fulfilling the stereotype, fella.
― milo z, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:16 (eighteen years ago)
This seems like a good place to post this:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2030/2215695328_e6b0dcc5ba_o.png
WTF.
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:47 (eighteen years ago)
"Hoy, Jon!" - ??
― nabisco, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:49 (eighteen years ago)
i hope you posted that bcuz of the forearms ad?
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:50 (eighteen years ago)
^ yes
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:50 (eighteen years ago)
lol "big brotherbook" welcome to the new era dbag
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:50 (eighteen years ago)
also that oregon trail app makes you invite 10 friends? wtf is that
So uh does anyone else like women with hairy forearms?
J0rdan hit cancel when it asks you to
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:51 (eighteen years ago)
mario kart app= DUD
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:52 (eighteen years ago)
Isn't GMAIL a bigger privacy concern anyway?
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:53 (eighteen years ago)
LEARN TO READ?
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:54 (eighteen years ago)
that fucking screengrab is nauseating to me
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:55 (eighteen years ago)
there's one arm too many in that cheapbooks advert???
― ken c, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:55 (eighteen years ago)
welcome to the new era dbag
KICKING AND SCREAMING. FUCK U COMPUTER
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:56 (eighteen years ago)
I noticed it was hairy-forearm based, but that still weirded me out less than "Hoy, Jon"
― nabisco, Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:58 (eighteen years ago)
i wonder when they say "their body" if they mean the women with hairy forearms or just the forearms themselves
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 24 January 2008 01:00 (eighteen years ago)
"their beauty" rather
it pisses me off enough when flickr keeps greeting me in some random gobbledygook
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 01:00 (eighteen years ago)
have some caffeine
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 01:03 (eighteen years ago)
if you were on facebook i would superpoke u boo
Really?
― Michael White, Thursday, 24 January 2008 01:21 (eighteen years ago)
I thought this would be about Nazi facebook groups.
― 31g, Thursday, 24 January 2008 01:36 (eighteen years ago)
For all the article is a crock, facebook dude does sound like a complete asshole.
Thiel is also a chess master and intensely competitive. He has been known to sweep the chessmen off the table in a fury when losing. And he does not apologise for this hyper-competitveness, saying: “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”
Here! Have a good hard punch in the nutsack, sore loser!
― Pashmina, Thursday, 24 January 2008 02:02 (eighteen years ago)
lol pash
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 24 January 2008 02:03 (eighteen years ago)
that's like the mom who told her daughter to make up a story about her dad dyign in iraq so she could win hannah montana tickets ("we did whatever we need to do to win")
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 24 January 2008 02:04 (eighteen years ago)
YOUR QUOTA OF THE WORD 'FASCIST' IS RUNNING LOW
REPLENISH? (Y/N)
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:37 (eighteen years ago)
social networking sites are no different, in purpose or design, than the act of attending church in the dark ages
anybody who buys into this shit is making a terrible, terrible mistake, and selling themselves short besides
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:44 (eighteen years ago)
I have had a few drinks, inspiring me to a be a little bit more condemnative than usual, but that doesn't change my intuition or my hypotheses
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:46 (eighteen years ago)
um HELLO when did church in the dark ages allow me to Blingee out my photo?! Hand-painted portraiture or illuminated manuscripts don't allow for animated star twinkling
― kingfish, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:48 (eighteen years ago)
'prithee, I have 2,896 friends'
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:50 (eighteen years ago)
'well met, good sir! forsooth, I be sexyblond_69'
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:51 (eighteen years ago)
'come, stay a while! stay, good kind sir, and be entertained! as I impart a tale of sorrow and woe concerning what drink are you'
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:52 (eighteen years ago)
please tell me you're both trying to get reposted on LOLXLCR and not honestly expressing some disbelief at the argument that some insipid peronsal-ad-with-blingee hipposhit is not so different from a similar, if ancient, model for generating and sustaining comprehensible social units within an overpopulated environment
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:06 (eighteen years ago)
trying to get reposted on LOLXLCR = lame, but I'll admit to it if it'll make you stop scaring me
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:11 (eighteen years ago)
I don't think this would pass muster in liberal arts grad school bro
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:12 (eighteen years ago)
at this point im genuinely worried about reading a headline like "GOVT EMPLOYEE HOLDS COWORKERS HOSTAGE, LECTURES THEM ON OVERPOPULATION BEFORE FATAL ANEURYSM"
― max, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:13 (eighteen years ago)
let's everybody get together every week and think about a dead guy a lot
oh wait
hang on a minute
no hang on a millenium
oh here we go
ok
let's everybody be a separate entity with their own special free personal ad on the computers where we can sell advertisements
CONGRATULATIONS WHATEVERSPACEBOOK YOU HAVE TRANSFORMED THE PURPOSE OF ORGANIZED RELIGION INTO SOMETHING TAXABLE
THE STATE THOUGHT IT HATED THE INTERNET! THE STATE WAS WRONG. ENJOY YOUR EXPLOITATION OF THE SAD LONELY MASSES. THANKS FOR GETTING RID OF THOSE BIBLE HUMPERS
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:13 (eighteen years ago)
some insipid peronsal-ad-with-blingee hipposhit is not so different from a similar, if ancient, model for generating and sustaining comprehensible social units within an overpopulated environment
-- El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:06 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
It's only a mistake if (a) you are not aware of the consequences or (b) you are aware of the consequences but don't care.
Also: Overpopulated environment? I personally know everyone in my Facebook list. It's no different (in principle) to meeting friends in a massive train station, say. You don't have to know all 55 million users, nor do you have to try. (MySpazz uses the term 'friends' rather loosely, but even the dumbest users know that.)
Also: Organised religion? What are we believing in again? It's a communication tool, not a philosophy.
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:15 (eighteen years ago)
^ fails to underline why Facebook gives me the rollicking SHITS
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:16 (eighteen years ago)
you folks have no fucking clue what you're doing. you have no fucking clue why you're doing it. you don't have any idea what insipid needs you're trying to satisfy, and you don't have any idea how your ancestors- fuck, your own living parents- satisfied said needs.
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:16 (eighteen years ago)
They had tea and biscuits with people they probably didn't even like. Fuck that. I can stay at home and eat/drink/sleep/wangle while I talk to people I probably don't even like.
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:18 (eighteen years ago)
you're perfectly willing to let somebody take away everything that makes you who you are and turn that into a marketing model, because god fucking forbid you miss out on the MAGNIFICENT OPPORTUNITY to show a bunch of random fucks from all over the entire planet what you look like when you're piss drunk
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:19 (eighteen years ago)
If that management model gets me a brilliant job in 2010, I win.
Everything that makes me who I am is nowhere near Facebook. I think you're angry at the people who don't realise the implications of prostrating themselves on this thing. It's possible touse Facebook and not be raped by it, honestly.
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:21 (eighteen years ago)
I'm not interested in bothering to try. Slippery slope, as they say.
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:23 (eighteen years ago)
We all feel that we should do certain things in life! Some of us think it looks great to be in “Ministry”. Therefore we offer ourselves in a certain capacity that we feel that is just right for us! What looks nice and rosy in our eyes might not be anywhere near what Jesus has in mind for us! What was our motive, for wanting to do that certain thing? Jesus knows! You can never duplicate the anointed calling of someone else, you cannot copy what Jesus has given someone else to do, because He has given them the Holy Ghost Power (ability) to fulfil that calling!
We read, concerning Solomon, “And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts.” 1 Chronicles 28:9.God Knows our Motive! We are told in God’s Word, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29: 18. When Christians do not hear, or have REVELATION from GOD, concerning their calling of what He wants them to do for Him, the people will perish! But praise God, many have heard the great commission, God’s Call, to “GO YE”.
On the Internet many have good “GOSPEL WEBSITES“, lifting up “JESUS“, many are sending out “WRITINGS“, and “INSPIRATIONS“, also lifting up “JESUS“, with “THE RIGHT MOTIVE“! Whatever God has called us to do, that is where we will “SHINE“ the best!
The most important thing for everyone reading this message is what are you doing, and, WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVE? If God has called you to do what you are doing and you have a GODLY MOTIVE, then God Bless you, and may I encourage you. If you are not sure, please pray about it, it will never bare forth fruit, unless it is ordained of God! But every Christian is to take heed to the great commission!
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:23 (eighteen years ago)
someone revise that text
hey jon you ever think about bothering to type out more than six words in a fucking row that you came up with all by yourself? Or is that fucking impossible?
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:24 (eighteen years ago)
I'm pretty consistent with my lack of effort.
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:26 (eighteen years ago)
8
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:27 (eighteen years ago)
We all feel that we should do certain things in life! But praise God, many have heard the great commission, God’s Call, to “GO YE!” The most important thing for everyone reading this message is what are you doing, and, WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVE? If God has called you to do what you are doing and you have a GODLY MOTIVE, then God Bless you, and may I encourage you.
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:27 (eighteen years ago)
oh man I just figured out that responding to other people's posts is the lamest thing you can do guys because it might imply you give a fuck about something
-- TOMBOT, Monday, June 4, 2007 1:34 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Link
Delete Undelete Ban User User Info
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:28 (eighteen years ago)
I'm tired and I didn't eat enough today. Drinking coffee again has put me a in better mood today. I should sleep.
GOING TO SLEEP
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:30 (eighteen years ago)
reactionaries
― Autumn Almanac, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:31 (eighteen years ago)
RASPUTIN
― remy bean, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:32 (eighteen years ago)
Don't sleep, Tom! NO SELL OUT!
― If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:37 (eighteen years ago)
the best part is that everybody on this thread besides me is a certifiable worthless cunt whose entire existence is a stupid accident
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 24 January 2008 10:12 (eighteen years ago)
can he get an amen?
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 24 January 2008 10:18 (eighteen years ago)
MAGNIFICENT OPPORTUNITY to show a bunch of random fucks from all over the entire planet what you look like when you're piss drunk
Ahahaha. Yes, thats ILX.
― Chewshabadoo, Thursday, 24 January 2008 10:34 (eighteen years ago)
fuck me. why didn't this piss-poor piece of polemic get the same kind of response when we DISCUSSED IT THE FIRST TIME ROUND?
― grimly fiendish, Thursday, 24 January 2008 12:15 (eighteen years ago)
http://www.banterist.com/images/Facebook-Furherbunker.jpg
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 24 January 2008 12:25 (eighteen years ago)
hahahahaha
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 24 January 2008 12:27 (eighteen years ago)
"DAS BUBBLEBATH! LOL!"
― Matt DC, Thursday, 24 January 2008 12:28 (eighteen years ago)
LOL @ josef goebbels family album at the bottom.
― Pashmina, Thursday, 24 January 2008 12:53 (eighteen years ago)
adolf added scrabulous was the best bit
― ken c, Thursday, 24 January 2008 13:47 (eighteen years ago)
actually god no. DAS BUBBLEBATH LOL omg! argh!
― ken c, Thursday, 24 January 2008 13:53 (eighteen years ago)
that's funny
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 24 January 2008 13:58 (eighteen years ago)
haha yeah that's my favourite part
― Ste, Thursday, 24 January 2008 14:00 (eighteen years ago)
surely this thread should be headed Facistbook?
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Thursday, 24 January 2008 15:58 (eighteen years ago)
what happened here?
― kingfish, Thursday, 24 January 2008 16:01 (eighteen years ago)
lool @ tracer pic
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 24 January 2008 16:05 (eighteen years ago)
HA HAHA HHAAAA AH!
― The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall, Thursday, 24 January 2008 16:11 (eighteen years ago)
Actually the best bit is "Vasily Chuikov updated his 'cities I've visited' application".
― Pashmina, Thursday, 24 January 2008 16:58 (eighteen years ago)
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Technology might be just as addictive as alcohol and drugs and could also wreak havoc with personal and work relationships, a leading expert said.
John O'Neill, the director of addictions services at the Menninger Clinic in Houston, Texas refers to it as "technology overload" when he sees addiction-like behavior in his patients using cell phones or emails.
"I think they share some of the same components as people who become addicted to alcohol and drugs in that we start to see that someone cannot really put it down and cannot stop the use of it even when there are some consequences," he said in a telephone interview.
"We can become overloaded by technology and suffer consequences in our relationships," he added.
O'Neill's observations are backed up by psychologists who have classified technology addiction as an impulse disorder that can be as socially damaging as alcoholism, gambling and drug addiction.
The Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Washington, which runs treatment programs and provides therapy, estimate that 6 to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million Internet users in the United States have a dependency on technology.
O'Neill said it's all about teaching people how to manage their behavior in a healthy way.
"How do you learn to set limits, develop boundaries, how do you make some sense out of what does it mean to healthily use the technology, or to healthily enter into a relationship with someone," O'Neill said.
He added that warning signs that someone may be sliding into an unhealthy relationship with technology include using text messages, email and voice mail when face-to-face interaction would be more appropriate, or limiting time with friends and family to tend to your email, return phone calls or to surf the Internet.
An inability to leave home without a cell phone, to relax without constantly checking email or to stop using the Internet are also worrying signs.
When the Internet becomes a more powerful draw than spending time with family or friends, or when someone pays more attention to gadgets than what is happening in real life are more danger signs.
But O'Neill said there is no reason to become alarmed about daily use of texting or emails.
"We've spent a lot of time and a lot of years talking about what does it mean to healthily use something, what does it mean to healthily drink a glass or two of wine as opposed to drinking a bottle.
"I think some people are drinking a bottle of technology and some people are able to drink a glass."
The Menninger Clinic is an international specialty psychiatric center that provides treatment, research and education.
― Gnomic Huckabee, Thursday, 24 January 2008 17:41 (eighteen years ago)
-- Pashmina, Thursday, January 24, 2008 4:58 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
yeah. i had to wiki him fer the lols though.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 24 January 2008 17:43 (eighteen years ago)