The Facebook / Can't Buy Me Love Parallel

I leave Facebook for a few weeks and everything goes to shit...

So, apparently Mark Zuckerberg is the evil asswipe we always knew he was for: 

A. Inventing Facebook in the first place

2.  Acting like he's GD Moussolini 

C. Having more money than me

Obviously and apparently luckily,  I haven't been exposed to the blasphemy that is taking place on the book right now.  EChance, who is ironically indifferent towards the whole debacle, sent me this appalling article.  Kay Kay was so up in arms she actually made the effort to take iphone photos of the new layout and email them to me, which for someone as computer illiterate as herself, is a very big deal.  I'm sure 'sent from iphone photos' hardly communicate the horror taking place,  but I have an unsettling feeling that my choice for lent couldn't have come at a better time.  Thank God, because I'd probably be strapping myself with TNT and road trippin' it to the Silicon Valley to go have a one on one chat with ol' Marky about this shit.

It wasn't long ago when the first Fbook overhaul took place.  I was pissed and joined about 5 groups protesting the change and may or may not have sent a strongly worded email to the administrators. But, to no avail, they held our hands Obama-style and gently guided us to change.  Now, I hardly remember the old facebook.  I have adapted, moving forward towards the future of fbook. But now this, it's is too much... 

This whole fiasco is eerily reminiscent of a little flick by the name of 'Can't Buy Me Love.'
 If you haven't seen this 80's masterpiece, you are seriously missing out (Netflix that shit stat or you can set your DVR to ABC Family on Sunday - it in constant rotation on that bitch)

  

If you haven't had the privilege of experiencing a young Patrick Dempsey in a bolo tie allow me to summarize: a nerdy kid (Dempsey as Ronald Miller) desperately wishing to be popular, pays the popular girl (Cindy Mancini - best popular girl character name to date) to pretend to date him, thus becoming popular by association...kid turns on his true friends and becomes a dick -- and in the end he must learn the high price of popularity. 

 

I'm sure you can see where this is going... 

Mark Zuckerberg was like Ronald Miller - just a nerdy computer science kid longing to hang with the cool crowd.  So, innocently enough, he concocts this fun new networking site and offers it to a small selective group of college students longing for something to call their own since Napster was taken away aka Cindy Mancini. They skeptically accept, believing this exclusive college-only site to be harmless -- hey, if anything it'll make Bobby jealous. Well, while Cindi Mancini is teaching Ronald how to be cool - giving him feedback on his appearance and helping him flourish by raising his market value, Ronald repays Cindi by giving her 'gifts' and other fun applications.  What could go wrong?!

Now, Ronald, feeling pretty comfortable with his new status, goes and introduces 'news feed' aka crack cocaine -- expanding his massive network of loyal followers.  Cindi thinks she's had enough and insist it's time to stage a public breakup.  Ronald calms Cindi down by assuring that now they've both gotten what they wanted. "Now you know Bobby is jealous because his newly updated status says so!"  OK.  

Before too long, Ronald suffers an identity crisis - completely forgets where he came from and who got him here.  He has tried to be popular for so long that he has turned into everything Cindi always found him refreshing for not being (Twitter) -- Cindi has created a monster and the monster has turned on her - calling her babe. Where did the sweet Ronald go with all his simplicity.  Before the cyberstalking and incessant green patch and hatching egg requests. Before you let my mom join.

Now -- in 'Can't Buy Me Love' Ronald's supremacy is cemented at the prom when he unknowingly performs a tribal african dance and all the high school sheep join in on Ronald's new hot dance craze...Cindi Mancini sees right through it and ultimately calls him out, bringing him back down to earth.   

    

Right now, we are at the prom with Mark Zuckerberg and he's starting to do this ridiculous dance that looks suspiciously like something else.  Who does he think he is?  Does he think we're just going to join in like sheep!?!  We like invented him, ya know!  Doesn't he know what happens at the end of the movie or even the history books?!  The corrupt dictator who stops listening to the people who helped him rise to the top always goes down -- hard.  Lucky for Mark this is cyberspace and not Stalinist Russian.  But whatever, despite the very real economic implications of facebook -- it's really not a big deal to me.  

In my time away from the book -- I've learned that yes, I can live without it and that life isn't any less of a bitch with it.  I'm sure i'll get over the new layout like everyone else and let Mark Zuckerberg reign as supreme ass hole forever.  In general I just don't appreciate power trips and I hope he gets knocked down a few notches by Cindi Mancini. But this is a defining moment in the life of Marky Z, will he let Facebook become the washed up high school football star with the beer gut and the bad 'remember when' stories or will he hold fast and gracefully endure your growing pains to become the future McDreamy?  

"But who would expect a 24-year-old to be anything but fickle and inconsistent?"

I mean right?!  The article has a major point -- maybe we can't blame him -- quarter life is anything but clear and easy...it's pretty much the most confusing shit ever.  Although I'm sure having a bazillion dollars eases the pain.  But I digress; I guess if Facebook's downfall is eminent it will save me the looming conundrum of "am I really going to put my honeymoon pictures on facebook and then my kid's pictures on FACEBOOK!?!" --- since these are such pressing issues.  Hopefully in the end, Mark will come back down to earth and we can all ride off in the sunset on a tractor together.

  

UPDATE: as of 4/13/09 - having actually logged onto the new facebook, I don't really see what all the fuss is about. Retracted. But I still think Zuckerberg is pompous for saying all that shit.