Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Some Thoughts on Timeline

Don't have Facebook Timline yet?  You're not alone.  98.4% of my friends list doesn't have it, either.  It remains unclear when everyone will be making the shift, but before you change over, let me offer you my brief overview:

1.  Clearly this was Zuckerberg sitting around one day thinking, Facebook doesn't do enough to let you stalk people already.  Because oh-em-gee TIMELINE.  You can stalk the FUCK out of people with Timeline.

2.  The whole concept of having a cover photo at the top of your page is pretty cool...if you have any design sense whatsoever.  Which most people don't.  I think about people on my friends list who, like, can barely spell their own names and I can't even fathom them coming up with a classy jpeg that's exactly 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high.  This can't end well...

Zuckerberg filled up his Timeline with some puppies and shit.

I, on the other hand, decided to make my Timeline look like MySpace.

3.  The friends list thing!  Dude!  It's so weird now!  With the "classic" profile look, you have twenty friends displayed in the sidebar and the list changes every twelve or twenty-four hours.  With Timeline, you have six friends at the top of your page and also a "randomized" friends list with all of your friends, both of which rearrange somewhat every time you refresh, but not enough for it actually to be random.

4.  How does Facebook choose who to display on your friends list?!  (That's the kind of shit I think about when I should be thinking about literally anything else on Earth because anything else would be more worthy of my time.  Timeline has made my curiosity worse.)  

5.  Timeline keeps throwing out awesome stories from my past and replacing them with less awesome stories.  I thought I had 2009 perfect.  I mean, totally golden.  Then BAM, the picture of me and Julia drinking in the kitchen during Senior Week was gone and a link to a bombastically weepy blog entry I wrote about Obama's inauguration was in its place.  What the hell?

6.  I barely remember writing that blog entry.  But Facebook remembers.  Nothing is safe with Timeline.  Nothing.  You just don't even know what crazy stuff from your past is going to randomly pop up and force you to stop and think about how simple your life used to be.  And remember, when everyone switches over, all of your friends will see all of this crap.

7.  Timeline creepily tabulates your friending activity.  238 people wrote on my wall in 2007.  I mean, what the fuck, who fucking cares?

8.  It also tells you how many people wrote on your wall for your birthday each year, which, I can already see, is going to be a one-way ticket to resentment and crippling insecurity.

Timeline handily makes your life look more interesting than it actually is by juxtaposing pictures with exciting links and wall posts on either side of an arbitrary divider.

9.  Timeline has a little box thingy at the top that shows your number of "Likes" and has a visual representation of your last two.  I really don't like to "Like" that many things because as soon as you "Like" something, you get all of that "Like"'s stupid updates in your newsfeed.  But until I "Like" something else, I'm stuck with Stephen Gyllenhaal's dumbass face staring at me every time I look at my profile since I "Liked" Cantara's book.  This is something I don't "Like" about how Timeline handles "Likes."

10.  Really and truly, out of all the things that Facebook has come up with, Timeline sucks the least horribly.  I only have five friends who have it right now, but of those five, I've spent the most time looking at...my own profile.  Because Timeline has reminded me that I lived other days before I lived this one, and that day was just as boringly normal as today is.  And apparently I find that fascinating.

Convincing you that you are in any way interesting:  it's the entire point of Facebook.  Which is why Timeline IS SUPER GREAT.  Or something.  The end.

5 comments:

  1. Guess I'm going to be really happy that most of the times I

    a) delete my posts after 24 hrs
    b) if I don't delete it's just some funny picture I shared from somewhere
    c) I'm gonna look like a loner coz my birthday isn't even published on FB and I think most people don't even know my birthday *ggg*
    d) I'm so gonna slow down my "using" of FB even more. Right now on my wall there are about a handfull of personal posts. *ggg*
    e)Why????? What is the sense of knowing anything about anyone? I actually begin to like the fact that I left many people in life behind. (Which to explain would lead to a blog instead of a comment *ggg* and I'm not gonna bore y'all)

    Sasha

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  2. oh and for the liking thing; You can unfollow a post :) which should (but not always does as I came across) leads to you not getting update-Blinkies about it...

    Sasha

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  3. okay 3 in a row is a new guinnes record *ggg* but you can't unfollow every post - don't ask me when you can and when not O.O

    Sasha

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  4. You also have the benefit of not having six years' worth of history on there. :D Who would have EVER thought back in 2005, when it was only American college kids who could join, that Facebook would turn into the giant that is now?!

    I don't mind much of the older stuff that's on there, but it was a little embarrassing to see how much I used to post about Jake. Ack.

    The running community in Memphis is VERY dependent on Facebook, and for that reason, it does come in handy a lot to be pretty specific about what's going on in my life. But it will definitely be interesting to see the effect that Timeline has on everyone. Sasha, you may have just answered that question, though, because I really don't see it having that much of an effect on you. It'll probably only really be a big deal to people who have dumped tons of their personal life online, year after year!! (And at least we have the option of hiding stories we don't want anyone to see. ;))

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  5. Guess it comes and goes with the experiences you made in life if you care who knows what - or not.

    AND I've always been rather suspicious about what I put online anyway ;)

    Yep, FB really has it's benefits - like with you and the running - and it had it with all the company and magazin links...but I found myself not able to keep up - no matter I interested I was. I guess FB is kinda overkill for me.

    I hate it - but I rarely even read what my dear friends post :( ... it's too much for me. I'm a bad friend o.0

    Sasha

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