Facebook

Though it is against my steppenwolf nature, at last the networking frenzy has taken hold of me. With less than my usual reticence I captured a few connections for my Linked-in page. This at least the new Dutch neo-capitalist culture politics has accomplished: more people are selling themselves with less sense of shame, or less visible manifestation of it.

I still can’t get rid of associations with window prostitution.

But even with my limited commitment to the medium, I already feel the symptom of this new addiction: the restless hunger for updates.

Participation in the so-called ‘social media’ is taking the form of a collective hysteria. This is alarming: ‘social media’ is merely a euphemism for a bunch of commercial facilities, created for no other purpose than making money out of your and my personal data.

Linked-in at least is restricted to a professional profile. Facebook is thumbs-down on all accounts: because of its dreadful, uncontrollable layout; its placement of misspelled advertisements of women traffickers on your page; its abuse of ‘friendship’; and its falsification of your ‘likes’ by marking items as ‘liked’ without you ever touching the damned thumb-up.

But maybe the decisive argument against Facebook is that it robs you of the copyright of your materials (as it states in its small print).

Why feed the monster?