Facebook Thinks You May Know a Fucking City

On the old blog, I went off on Facebook a couple of times. I don't think Zuckerberg noticed, so I figured I would try it again.

I thought the People You May Know application was gone a few months ago. We all know that Facebook Thinks You May Know Your Ex-Girlfriend, and we all know how annoying that presumption is. I thought enough people would have gotten irked enough about seeing their ex's lovingly draped around some other d-bag to encite them to write to Zuckerberg and tell him to shitcan the app. I thought it would get its neck chopped during the infamous Facebook redesign (do any of you perpetually unsatisfied motherfuckers even remember what "The Old" Facebook looked like anymore?) but, no, it's still here. Even if you methodically go into the app and x out the faces of all the snots who made fun of you in elementary school and denied you oral sex in high school, more will come back in a week or so. It's like shooting the Terminator in the face, cutting the limbs off a starfish, or vivesecting Joan Rivers.

Of the 27 images shown to me on the "People You May Know" app, here are the stats:

4 - the number of people I definitely know

2 - the number of people I possibly know

0 - the number of people to whom I will send a Facebook friend request

5 - the number of things that are not people

Wait-- what? I thought this was the "People You May Know" application-- people, as in carbon-based life forms of higher functioning? Yeah, well, you're wrong.

Apparently, Facebook thinks I may know:

Del's Lemonade & Refreshments, Inc.

Old Nickelodeon

Philly Cheesesteaks

The Beach

and, easily my favorite,

Cortona, Italy

Well, here's the truth:

* I've only had Del's Frozen Lemonade once from a truck in Providence, Rhode Island while visiting my inlaws. It wasn't bad, and I'd have it again, but our relationship will not be going any further than that.

* There's a new Nickelodeon?

* I used to live in Philadelphia and I have, on occasion, been known to eat and enjoy Philly cheesesteaks. They are not, though, a "people I know," nor am I inclined to "become a fan" of them. I'm a fan of Peter Sellers, Gilbert & Sullivan, and "Southland."

* I go to the beach, but it is also not a "people I know" nor am I especially "a fan." I love looking at the ocean and dubiously attired hot chicks, but I don't love getting sunburned, getting sand in my hair, toes, fingernails, asscrack, taint, sandwiches. I also don't particularly enjoy not having a place to stay at the beach to shower off my hair, toes, fingernails, asscrack, taint, sandwiches.

* Cortona, Italy, huh? Where the fuck'd you come up with that one, FB? I'll bet it's nice, but I've never been there, and I wouldn't Facebook it, even if I had.

Where's the Facebook page for Homeodent Lemon-flavored toothpaste? I guess either Homeodent will create it or I will. Once I stop being so difficult and critical.

Seriously, though, does anybody else see this bullshit as diminishing our relationships with each other? I mean, I know the point is that I'm supposed to go to an old high school teacher's Facebook page and go, oh! He's a fan of Ikea and Weehawken, New Jersey. Humpf. Wow. I didn't know before. Somehow, my life is now enhanced by that utterly useless knowledge, and my portrait of this person is now deeper and richer than it was heretofore.

Right.

I urge you, the next time Facebook tempts you by thinking "you may know" Fiat Motor Corporation, Spiderman, or Wegman's-- stop and consider why you're clicking on the icon. Is that what you want people to think about you: that you're just an amalgam of a bunch of random, accumulated objects, products and noise?

If you want people to know the real you, if you want them to really know how beautiful and eclectic and random and snarky and fucked up you are, you're probably better off starting a blog.