Someone Voted For You!

I have been thinking about Facebook applications lately. Some are fun and cute and others make me stop and think.

One that strikes me as funny is the lil green patch- you plant virtual plants, but that has none of the benefits of food, pollen, or oxygen production and in fact increases your carbon footprint making you spend time on the computer. Maybe there is a greater benefit- I didn’t really look into it, but that was my first thought when I saw it.

Ones that I have given more thought to are the top friend, best friend, and recently the nicest friend thing. While mildly interesting to compare everyone, I don’t want to rank my friends because I don’t think that makes me very nice. No offense to those who use the application! ☺ Maybe you don't think like me and that's ok. Everyone's entitled to his or her own opinion. You have to rank people and use the other functions in the application to get more nice points or become nicer yourself, so ranking people to tell them they are nice is really a ploy to get them to say you are nice, which I find waaay more narcissistic than the 25 things lists (and related note crazes). Those lists have created a lot of critical articles in the media and “anti-“ groups on Facebook, but I think opposition to those “rank your friends” applications is much more logical. In 25 things, sure you talk about yourself, which can be considered rude, exhibitionist, boastful, narcissistic, etc, but you learn interesting facts about people no matter how well you know them already and the collective list may tell you something about yourself or others, unlike the friend rankings which I can’t see a real benefit to unless you want to see yourself rise in the rankings of nicest or best or whatever. Not that all applications have to be logical or beneficial, but if you're going to oppose 25 Things for narcissism, then you should be all over nicest/best friend applications. Perhaps the opposition is really coming from the fact that it is popular and there will always be those who oppose the appearance of jumping on the bandwagon.

One can analyze the online world of 25 thing lists, blogs, networking site habits, etc endlessly, so I’ll stop at this for now.

This note will probably earn me a lot of mean person votes, but oh well. ☺

Facebook makes foreign policy, opposes international law, and supports brutal occupation

Facebook gets entangled in Middle East conflict

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080317/wr_nm/settlers_palestinians_facebook_dc

So, it looks like Facebook rightly had been calling the place where illegal Jewish settlers live, Palestine. They whined quite loudly, I'd guess, and got Facebook to call illegal Jewish settlements Israel. Facebook is now determining our foreign policy. Great!

Ok, so maybe they don't determine the policy, but they aren't halping matters when they mkae "rulings" in opposition to international law (Geneva Convention) and the US's own foreign policy positions. Our obsequeously pro-Israel government even admits that these settlements and expansion of such is not ok, so for Facebook to call settlements part of Israel is overstepping it's bounds to say the least.

Now, I will go easy on them if they allow me to say I'm from the moon or Mars or Neverneverland. If I can say I'm from those places, then settlers can equally say they are from Israel. Same difference.

Well, I can see how Facebook may have gotten confused. The US disagrees with Israel expanding/building settlements and as far as I know, considers such illegal under the Geneva Convnetion, but only sporadically says anything about it. Even when officials speak on it, it is only to make suggestions or slap on the wrist. Other nations would and do face sanctions, harsh language and maybe even threats of invasion for lesser crimes/actions. Not Israel! We continue to fund their illegal and brutal occupation, land grabs, extrajudicial assassinations, closures, and other collective punishment to the tune of $3 billion or more a year. (at teh expense of our own populations' needs)

Politicians would rather keep their high paying jobs where they can legislate themselves pay raises than stand up for peace and justice and serve the public.