From cartoonist Clay Jones about ‘Facebook Jumpers,’ Facebook revolts, and Facebook hoaxes
Of course I’m on Facebook. Isn’t everybody?
Facebook is very useful for me. I mostly use it to promote my cartoons, but I get a lot of personal use out of it also. It’s great to stay in contact with friends from high school, old work colleagues I haven’t seen in 20 years, family members I haven’t seen in over a decade and people I still see in the real world. I also like to talk politics and argue with conservatives (to a point. You eventually realize that arguing with a conservative isn’t a fair fight as they’re ill-equipped to deal with actual information).
I also like to turn it off sometimes and ignore it. That can be difficult as the settings on my phone make it beep every time I get an update on Facebook. But when I’m able to ignore it for eight hours or so, I usually come back to about 50 notifications. That’s a good thing because it means people are reading my cartoons. They click the “like” button (I’m looking forward to the upcoming dislike button, by the way), leave comments, and share the cartoons, which gets shared by their friends, which gets shared by their friends, etc.
Apparently Facebook went down Monday. I think it was the third time over the past month. I never noticed. All I noticed were posts informing me that it had gone down, which is like getting a phone call informing you that your phone is now working.
People freak out when Facebook goes down. When I worked at The Free Lance-Star, the human resources department decided one day that they should block Facebook from all the company computers. It took about four seconds for the entire newsroom to notice. It was like a wave at a sporting event. All down the newsroom, heads were popping up from cubicles screaming about Facebook being down. It was a huge revolt. Facebook was unblocked within the hour. If only we could have rallied the troops as well to fight for restoring the pay they had cut, or hours, or our 401K, or our benefits, or our jobs. I’ve only seen a newsroom freak out to that extent over two other issues: free food and an earthquake. The earthquake probably comes in third.
There are also a couple of Facebook hoaxes currently making the rounds. If you’re on Facebook (and you are), you’re aware of it and may have fallen for it. I haven’t. I’m trained to be suspicious about everything. The new hoax is that you need to copy and paste some legal jargon or your photos and statuses will be less private. Don’t fall for it. Nothing is going to change the way everyone can see those selfies and cat pictures.
The other hoax is that you need to post the legalese to avoid being charged $9.10 to remain private.
One other thing, and it has to be true because I read it on the Internet. More people are killed taking selfies than killed by sharks. So if you must take a selfie, do it with a shark.
http://claytoonz.com/2015/09/29/facebook-jumpers/
Ypu say: “If you’re on Facebook (and you are),”
Nope, I’m not!
I do not use Facebook, except for occasionally checking out some commercial site.
When it first came out it was a children’s play site, then it became a commercial wasteland with only advertising as its purpose. No thanks!