Remember when email from a friend was something to trust, a legitimate email worth reading? Sure there was always spam, but emails from friends were safe. Back when an email titled “Clarence Jones has poked you” would be considered offensive; when your friend Sal wanted you to join the real mafia? These were the times back before Facebook.com infiltrated your inbox with useless reminders of computerized farms and narcissistic quizzes. When Facebook was just a social networking website connecting old friends.

But now, unfortunately, we’re now in a reality where “elf tossing” has be considered socially acceptable. Which leaves me with more questions than answers: How does one respond to such action? Is it better to heave the medium-sized elf or the “above average size”? And finally what is the proper retaliation? Sling-shotting a dragon or cannon balling a wasps nest?

Congratulations Mark Zuckerberg, you have managed to take a perfectly respectable social networking website and turn it into the next Myspace; from up-and-coming stalking site to an advertising-hungry has-been. Facebook has sold out to tween girls everywhere through features causing users to self-obsess. The site is also losing credibility via bombarding its members with quizzes, games, and other general wastes of time.

Applications are granted a section where users are allowed to “like” a page or post by clicking a thumbs up; therefore the more “likes”, the more popular the app is, and eventually only adding to the problem. Not only do applications take pages longer to load, they scare users from adding something that might actually be useful, such as the awareness or causes pages. After one encounters so many “Which Beastie Boy are you?” or “What letter does your best friend’s mother’s second cousin’s name start with?” requests, it’s hard to take anything with the name “Facebook” on it seriously. Thanks to the damage of applications, the ol’ FB is becoming about as credible as the National Enquirer’s front page.

However, for those of us still wishing to join or maintain your Facebook page, I have one simple rule for survival: IGNORE. Next time your inbox fills with pointless application invites, simply ignore the request and better yet the “friend” who sent it to you. Eventually they will get the hint, and bother others with their ridiculous requests. However, for those who are still sending the “rate my applications” pages, there’s always the de-friending option. And as for you Facebook … thumbs down. Thumbs down.

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Bethaney Wallace is a English Literature and Creative Writing Major at K-State. When she’s not ranting for The Social Robot, Bethaney is co-copy editor at the K-State Collegian and attempting to finish her last semester of school.

Image courtesy of: http://biobreak.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/a-brief-rant/