My Internal Eternal Battle with Facebook and Twitter

Instagram. I never signed up for it and I never will. I said the same thing about Facebook and Twitter, but I finally lost the battle along with the last bit of integrity I once maintained. I got sucked into social networking. Everyone else was doing it so why not me (very un-punk rock, I know). Recently, and in light of the racket surrounding Instagram’s proposed language that would give the company ownership of any of its users images, I have been brought back to an all too familiar place. Should I delete my Facebook or Twitter account, or both? I’m not overly concerned about privacy policies. I feel not much can be kept secret these days regardless if you’re online or not. However, if someone desires to use my crappy ass, non-professional camera phone images that have most likely been compressed upon upload to their site for financial benefit, the least they could do is show some common courtesy and ask me politely for my permission. Chances are, being the kind human being that I repeatedly convince myself I am, I would say yes. I think it would be cool to see a mediocre picture I snapped used for advertising purposes. I completely understand that these sites need to make money and I appreciate being able to use them for “free”, but steal an image from me and you’ll get a big FU. Probably not even a fully spelled out fuck you, because I’m somewhat too nice. Would you take something that rightfully belonged to someone else without asking? If so, you’re lame. So once again I find myself asking my yin and yang, barley conscious mind, should I keep my social networking accounts. Below are some pros and cons.

Pros:

• See Cons

Cons:

• You can see what your friends are up to, which is great, because more than ½ the people who are your friends are folks you hardly ever or never talk to, or see face to face.
• A few people or businesses you like post way too often.
• You get stupid game/app requests, like Farmville.
• Your personal data could be used by NASA to develop the next Mars Rover.
• You husband, wife, mother, father, significant other, etc. constantly bug you about the amount of time you spend on social networking sites.
• As CEOs go, Facebook’s, Mark Zuckerberg seems like a douche bag.
• You get invited to bunch of events and it makes you feel important.
• You spend a good portion of your day checking people’s status updates on your phone or computer for posts that have no use in life when you could actually be doing something, like creating world peace.
• It makes you feel good when someone likes your post, shares your post or makes a comment. This gives you a Stuart Smalley-like self affirmation. Say it: ‘I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!’
• You can be friends with Food Network star, Paula Deen.

Steal the pic of my 6 Second Abs piece
of exercise equipment and
I'll break your face!

Editor-in-chief: MP