Facebook Petition

My last post was about a petition I didn't sign, today's is about a petition that I did sign.  Because it's only fair to provide balanced non-biased petition coverage.  Also because I'm lazy and this was an easy post.

People should sign this!  It's a petition asking Facebook to expand the options regarding gender and sexuality in a profile's Basic Info section, to include genders beyond just male and female and to include sexualities beyond just straight, gay or bi.  It's important!

I think these two petitions are a pretty good example of something that probably isn't all that helpful and something that is.  Well-meaning (though shark-racist) it may be, the dolphin petition doesn't seem like it will be all that useful in the grand scheme of things.  I mean, why would the Government of Peru care about some random Canadian lady's opinion on how they enforce their dolphin ban?  Or a hundred random Canadian ladies, or a thousand.  Basically, the opinions of a few average citizens in another country just aren't that important to foreign governments.  I don't pay taxes to Peru, I don't vote there, I don't even think about Peru all that often.  But I do use Facebook.  I'll go out on a limb and say that most people on the internet use Facebook.  Most everybody signing that petition will be a Facebook user.  Unlike Peru, Facebook will have a reason to care about the opinions of people signing this petition.  If it gets enough signatures it might make them realize that while it seems like a simple thing, it's important to a lot of people and thus something that they should consider changing, to better serve their customers.  There are loads of people who are unable to express their gender or sexuality accurately on Facebook, and considering the amount of time people spend online, and how our social interactions are largely taking place on sites like Facebook these days than they are in face-to-face situations, I think it's a pretty big deal that people can properly say who they really are in those situations.  And it's not like it would be a lot of work for Facebook, either; unlike Peru, which will have to spend a lot of money sending ships and crews out on regular patrols and then having officials work extra time dealing with the increased numbers of caught offenders, all Facebook has to do is add another button or two to their website.  And Facebook changes their website constantly.

So, to compare:  the dolphin petition is asking Peru to a) listen to the opinions of a bunch of random foreigners who offer nothing to the country but criticism, and b) spend a ton of money to placate these foreigners (who will probably forget about Peru entirely the second they do).  Sure, there are ethical and legal reasons to do what the petition is asking, but those reasons are not actually affected by the petition in any way.  The Facebook petition, though, just asks Facebook to a) listen to people who are probably already users as they express a grievance with the service they are being offered directly, which impacts their active use of the site rather than just their polite sensitivities for a situation that they aren't directly involved in at any stage, unlike the Peru one, and b) make a small change to the profile setup that won't affect anybody but the people who are asking for the change, and which can probably be done the next time Facebook does some big huge redesign that everyone will hate like they do two or three times a year.  The difference is huge regarding the amount of work the petitions are requesting be done as well as in the direct impact the issues have on the people signing the petitions in the first place.  So it's kind of disappointing that the largely impractical, armchair-activist dolphin petition has almost eighteen thousand signatures as of this time while the Facebook petition that has an actual day-to-day effect on a number of Facebook users over a relatively simple issue only has about a hundred.

Also, it never occurred to me to post this Nimona strip on my last post about sharks.  So this is to make up for it.

Any day where I can plug Nimona is a good day.

Things I Hate On Facebook

You know what the worst part of Facebook is?  It isn't the constantly-changing layouts or the sketchy privacy settings or the aggravating app and game invites.  It's the people.  What is it about Facebook that turns pleasant, reasonable people into self-righteous, judgmental, pointlessly manipulative douchebags?  They seemed like perfectly fine people when I met them and said "Hey, you seem cool, you should add me to Facebook."

But nope.  Every day I look at my Facebook feed and find another half-dozen bullshit photo or status memes to hate.  Just look at this shit.

"Vapid pseudo-inspirational bullshit with poor grammar!  You're beautiful!  And skinny!  You'd better be skinny, because that's what I meant when I said you're beautiful.  Don't you dare be overweight when you step on that scale.  Or be happy with your fat.  EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE SKINNY!  You're reading this on a phone, right?  Haha, of course you are."

"It's wrong to call her a slut, because she's actually a virgin! Shame on you for mistaking one of the Pure and Untainted for someone who has sex.  The problem was clearly where you thought she was not Virginal, rather than the idea that slut-shaming anyone regardless of their sexual activity is inherently wrong.  Like the pregnant girl walking down the street!  She was raped!  She doesn't deserve to be bullied for her pregnancy, unlike another pregnant girl who got pregnant from consensual sex.  She has it coming, so I'm not going to even try to defend her.  You don't know ANYBODY!  Not really!  Isn't that mind blowing?  People have lives completely unrelated to you!  If you don't re-post this then you endorse bullying and I bet 99% of you are terrible, terrible people who want kids to be bullied until they kill themselves, because that's what it means if you don't re-post this.  Love!"

"Hey everybody, let's play a game that tests who is paying attention to me so you all think about me and tell me a meaningless fact relating to how you know me because I need to feel like the center of attention and bask in how my four hundred Facebook friends talk about how they met me!  And I can do the same for you, but you'd better not pay attention to me when I'm making this desperate bid for attention without re-posting this idiotic game on your own wall, because I don't care about you if you don't play petty attention-seeking games like me."

"Everybody except for me is shallow and self-centred for only thinking about themselves and what they want, because if they ever express any desire for themselves then they have been permanently disqualified from ever being able to think about other people.  If you want anything for yourself, anything at all, then you are a terrible human being.  I am the most thoughtful, caring, gracious person who has ever existed. Let's see how many people re-post this, I bet it will be hardly anyone because I am just so inconceivably good when everybody else is so unbelievably shallow!"

Just....fuck you.  Fuck all of you dick-biting shit chutes.  I'm going to bed.

Stop having lame groups, Facebook.

Seriously, what?  "Actual anti-bullying"?  One, how is it more "actual" than any other anti-bullying group, and two, if you are going to say you are somehow different then you should probably make a description to explain why you are "actual" and other groups are somehow fake.

Also, what the fuck Facebook since when can people add me to groups without my agreeing to join the group.  That is incredibly sketchy.  Now I need to go through my facebook page and see what, if any, other random stupid groups people have added me to.

For the record, while I am against bullying in schools, I am not gonna join in with a shitty circle-jerk of a group that comes off as incredibly arrogant right from the get-go (remember they are ACTUAL anti-bullying, as opposed to those posers who only PRETEND to be anti-bullying) without even the initiative to describe how their group is different from the others, that does nothing to actually stop the problem, not even passing around petitions or proposing new policies for schools or brainstorming ways to enforce the policies already in place, and for some reason feels the need to break off into completely random tangents to lecture furiously about the danger of teachers in short skirts and low-cut tops and how they must set an example for the students (???).