Anti-social Networks

Popularity has always been a game in life for some. On the internet it's a religion. So let's look at the main offenders.

Facebook:

The Wall Mart of communication. The main goal of this network seems to be to add as many applications to your profile so as to render it useless and of no actual value to the world. It's the equivalent of carrying around with you all the personality and aptitude tests you've taken in your entire life and before introducing yourself to someone asking them to review these tests and take one themselves for a comparison. The interface is the easiest to use, though they don't allow for much creativity in the page layout (which can be a good thing).

Bebo:

If you went to your local pound store (or 99c store) and bought a social network, this'd be it. To win at this social network you have to show off better than everyone else. As soon as you do anything, comment on a photo, update your profile or look at a page the wrong way Bebo will inform everyone you know (and maybe some of those you don't) what you have done as if it were some sort of amazing revelation you had that the world needs to know about.

It's for a generation of people who seem to have equal interest whether celebrities kill someone or go to the toilet.

Myspace:

Give the world a webpage, and allow them to edit the code. The result, one in four pages are unreadable. But at least they're allowing some creativity.

To win at MySpace, fill out all the information it requests (height, weight, schools attended, job), then fill out and place on your profile all the surveys, tests and chain letters you receive. Flourish with large oversized pictures until opening the page causes browsers to crash.

Even with overlord Rupert Murdoch owning this and about 10 billion profiles on it, it still is the most useful for finding bands (though nothing else). I couldn't help feeling that the whole thing is just one big experiment to see how many ads people can be exposed to at once.

http://thosearentmuskets.com/sketches/internetparty2.html