One Lucky Soul: OLS Reflections 35

OLS Reflections 35 — Facebook Edition I by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul

Elena Scotti/FUSION

Throughout the past 10 years, Facebook has become our main social media outlet. Naturally, it invaded our everyday life and reality. I thought that one fun way to reminisce about this decade is to gather my related statuses into articles. Some are slightly philosophical reflections, some are sarcastic observations, and some jokes among others ravings, rantings, and ramblings ― all about Facebook. The order is from older to newer.

1- Just like I passionately keep and skim through my grandfather’s 1930 almanac, decades from now our descendants will download our entire Facebook activity and skim through it as well. So let us think before we post.

2- I get excited whenever I see someone liking their own post on F.B because I think it must be something really special. But I’m usually wrong.

3- If your F.B relationship status is ‘It’s Complicated’ then it’s probably time to move on.

4- It’s funny how some Facebook friends of mine whom I’ve never met in real have younger photos of themselves on their profiles, which makes me assume that they are of a certain age group, then I find out that they are 15 years older than my estimate.

5- I have some F.B friends stuck in that “I won’t un-friend you, but will sure unfollow you” zone.

6- That utterly bizarre moment when you find that seven of your friends have ‘liked’ Kim Kardashian and Facebook is asking you if you want to do the same.

7- You must really love cigarettes and cell phones if you choose to be shown with either in your Facebook profile photo.

8- It’s pretty simple, you see. But many people are lazy parrots who do not care enough to Google something before sharing it with the world.

Whatever you copy/paste in a Facebook status will never protect your legal rights of privacy, alright. Googling literally takes seconds, “Better safe than sorry” is simply an excuse for being a lazy ass.

The same goes for other meaningless posts which offer giveaway plane tickets, by KLM, Emirates, Quantas, United Airline, Virgin, or Delta. And again for more dodgy scams promising a chance to win a free Mercedes, BMW, Range Rover, or Audi once you ‘like’, share, and comment on the post with the colour of the car you fancy. Seriously. Most of these pages are created hours before "the offer" and are not affiliated with the original company.

Oh, and of course, Facebook’s monthly subscription fees ― around since 2009!

One would assume that after all these hoaxes flooding the Internet for years, people would stop falling for them. In this day and age there is no need to be such simpletons. Wishful thinking may be a real thing, but so is Google.

*Facecrooks

9- What are the people who have anonymous names and photos on Facebook really afraid of?

10- People adding ‘Dr.’ to their names on Facebook is as strange as choosing to be on a cell phone in the profile picture. Both need a special kind of person.

11- Just like Facebook recently added an ‘Interested’ button for the events, they should also add an “I clicked on ‘Going’ only for support, but I’m not actually going” button.

12- Those who add their country’s flag to their Facebook profile photos do not differ much from those who add photos of presidents, religious men, famous stars, and sports athletes. The worshiper and the worshiped may be different, but the idolatry is the same.

13- It’s funny how some people on Facebook address their words to presidents, police, airline companies, and TSA personnel while their privacy setting on ‘Friends’. If you truly want to be heard make it ‘Public’.

14- Dear Facebook, what’s the point of giving our News Feed the option between “Top Stories” and “Most Recent” if you’ll neurotically keep changing it to “Top Stories”?

15- The Nine Boxes:

Some years back while in a relationship I noticed that on her Facebook page there appeared a new guy in the 9 ‘top’ friend boxes on the left that everyone gets to see. And by that I mean that however I refresh or spend a full day or two without checking it, the new dude’s face is right there. Yeah I notice patterns, even in little things; that’s what I do and I’m not the only one.

At the time I also knew that whoever appeared on my own little boxes are those I interact with the most; if not publicly, then it could be through private messaging — recent interactions have a priority over older ones.

I had equally noticed that friends’ faces do not have to appear on those boxes just because they are ‘new’ friends — as it happens more often these days.

As things remained the same on the girl’s page, I received an unexpected message from a childhood friend from the other side of the globe.

“Hey buddy, can you check this (female) profile and tell me who you see in those 9 friend boxes.

Sure, Brotherman.” Interesting, I thought.

Through some chatting, I came to learn from him that he was going through a tough break-up and apparently he suspected something and was proven right — with the 9 freakin’ boxes being part of it all.

I, too, was proven right when one day later I found that the girl and this ‘box’ guy had indeed been talking a lot in private, even meeting a few times. Uhu.

Throughout the following years, I began noticing that the boxes became more random and ‘secure’ without revealing the private messages bit. Today, even though there are also patterns, but the boxes rotate regularly and are way more random than several years ago.

As I later found out, the “secret” magic algorithm formula Facebook uses include many variables, which all play a role in determining who are the nine faces you’ll see: Viewing someone’s profile/photos, tagging, commenting/liking on posts, online chatting, “currently online”, AND private messages.

That’s in addition to other algorithms relating to who you get to see in your News Feed and who comes up first when you ‘search’ by entering a single letter.

Remember, Facebook as a business enterprise always wants you to connect with more people, so they devise ways to do so. Some, though, are more clever than others.

Obviously Facebook realized this flaw at some point and updated their systems… after ruining millions of relationships and shits. Yet one must remain grateful to those outdated systems.

16- Several times when I replied to folks’ F.B statuses with sarcasm, usually it’s the very first comment, and what I say wasn’t to their liking or it confused them, they deleted the whole post instead of just ignoring it or trying to convince or understand me. Other times they just delete my comment.

17- Interestingly, when I went back in the timeline to see how it all began before putting up this piece, I found my very first Facebook post on April 23, 2007 to be a favourite Albert Einstein quote:

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

18- I know people who delete their Facebook comments if they are not replied to, sometimes days later.

Stay Tuned for Part Two: OLS Reflections — Facebook Edition Deux