Being a sociable sort of chap I decided to sign up to Facebook sometime during the summer of 2007 (originally I think, because I had the beginnings of the Antikrish bug and felt the need to go public with my ego but had fallen foul to neglecting my html skills and it was a lazy way to do it). 

I chose Facebook over Myspace because I couldn’t be arsed with the various editors you needed to edit profiles on Myspace, and they all look pretty similar to me anyway?  Facebook profile, bang bang bang, few pictures here and there, done.  You could see why it was taking fickle Myspacers away in their droves, at least initially.

Up until four months ago, Facebook was a reasonably funky way of finding and interacting with people I’d lost touch with, or even just communicate with those who were already within my social circles.  At the time most people were still on Myspace or Bebo and my friends list was fairly minimal because of the amount of people on it at the time.  All nice and cosy.

By November (and leading up to Christmas) I’d noticed that Facebook had received a great deal of internet awareness (to say the least) and I suddenly found all sorts of people sending me friends requests.  One completely mute girl in my office sent me a request seemingly just to add me as a notch to her friends list-bedpost and I’d never spoken to her before; or since!.  She got sacked just after Christmas and I deleted her around the same time.  Bye bye ya weirdo!!!!

OK, fine, I went along with Facebook for the time being as I always enjoy shifting my perception of a person who I only knew as ‘that lass who is always on the photocopier’ to ‘the woman in my office who is a fully paid up member of the ‘Welsh Women’s Hotpants Skidiving Corp’.   

What was originally a simple way of staying in touch quickly became saturated by an abundance of incredibly similar applications (best friends, best buddies, cool friends, top friends……all the same thing?!?) and requests to join pointless groups such as the very recent Diana-Syndrome driven Heath Ledger RIP group (I might add I was pretty shocked to find out about his passing, but for gods sakes get a life you black cloud inspired group of snivelling funeral fetish chimps!?!?).  The fun-wall applications quickly became full of the same sort of forward jokes (which are NOT funny) which get spammed to my work inbox!

I believe that Facebook epitomises the lazy way in which the average person uses the net, endless forwards, benign and pointless messages and giving a home to applications which either crashed due to poor design or overpopulated servers. 

It’s a shame really because the site had so much potential and I quickly realised I’d teetered on the abyss of becoming one of the vacuous sorts of people I’d always failed to understand.  Namely the sort of person that preferred a large mass of faceless friends (whom they never seem to know fully), over a small group of kindred spirits.  I decided to cut my losses and run by inviting people who I genuinely wanted to stay in touch with via MSN messenger.  I’ve always preferred quality of quantity with regards to having chums so Facebook had to go.

I imagine I’ll pop up an Antikrish mirror site on Myspace at some point because social networking does have it’s merits.  I tend to think that although Myspace is limited in the flexibility of it’s template options, I reckon it’s still the best way of networking compared to Facebook.  Why?  Quite simply it does what it says on the tin and for that I can’t criticise Myspace at all.

So, thank you Facebook, it was fun whilst it lasted but for gods sakes you lot, if you want to throw sheep at each other then go and visit Wales, you’ll get some fresh air to boot (and if you’re lucky, witness the Hotpants Skidivers, or HO’S, on their midmorning practice run).