Do You "Like"
My Brilliant New Facebook Idea?
by Roz Warren
and Liz Lowe
(This essay first
appeared on www.theyellowham.com)
Since Facebook
isn’t going to start charging us for
membership, I’ve decided to go ahead and
institute my own membership structure and allow
my Facebook friends to pay me directly via Paypal.
If I don’t receive your generous donation
before midnight tonight, I will confiscate your
icons and “unlike” your updates. If I
do receive an appropriate payment, you will
receive a lovely “Facebook Friend
Certificate of Authenticity” adorned with
faux gold flecks.
You can
proudly display your Certificate in a prominent
place in your home, where its dazzling beauty
will grab the attention of all your guests. It
will serve you well, not only as a conversation
starter but as an informal face-to-face Facebook
Friend evaluation tool. While your visitors are
admiring your Certificate, your casual
conversation can turn toward more rigorous
questioning such as:
l) Do you
agree that the more Facebook friends you have,
the worthier you are as a human being?
2) A day spent
on Farmville herding pretend sheep around a
pretend field is a day well spent. True or False?
3) Do you
spend most of your time on Facebook, or all of
your time on Facebook?
4) If you sign
an online petition, there is no need to take
actual political action or donate money to a
worthy cause. True or false?
5) When you
are “unfriended” by a FB friend, the
appropriate response is:
A) Grief
B) Rage
C) Acceptance
D) Setting loose your most unruly pretend crop-crunching
cows in their pretend field?
6) Your knee-jerk
response to an online survey is just as important
as carefully thinking through any issue. True or
False?
7) Isn’t
it true that the ability to view cute baby
animals 24/7 is the activity toward which all of
civilization has been progressing?
8) What do you
do if a Facebook Friend fails to wish you a happy
birthday?
A) Unfriend!
B) Submit an “abuse of terms“ report.
C) Post the following as your status: “I am
cleaning out my FB Friends list. If you wish to
remain my friend, please upload a photo of the
hand-made card you laboriously crafted to
celebrate my birthday -- which is today!”
D Realize that if you care deeply about this,
it’s time to turn off your computer and get
a life.
9) Your
favorite FB links to YouTube are:
A) Music groups from the past that no one listens
to anymore.
B) Music groups from the present that no one
listens to now.
C) Anonymous dogs and cats behaving badly.
D) A lecture on the dialectics of Farmville.
10) My idea to
“monitize” Facebook by charging
my FB friends to continue their online
relationship with me makes me a brilliant genius
in the true pioneering spirit of American
innovators like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and
Steve Jobs and not a slothful mooch who intends
to get paid for camping out in front of her
computer, gobbling tasty snacks and
“liking” things that don’t exist
while the real world goes to hell around her.
True or False? (Be very careful how you answer
this one!)
Evaluating
their responses to these questions is an
excellent way for the true FaceBook aficionado to
rule out those pesky “real” friends.
Meanwhile, may
I ask a personal favor of you, my very closest 11,837
“Friends?“ If you like this essay,
please share it! If you don’t
“like” it, you’d just better guard
your pretend field of crops! Because my pretend
crop-crunching cows are on their way over there
right now, and they’re feeling very hungry.
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List And Biography For Liz Lowe
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