The Bizarritude of Facebook
Saturday, 2 August 2008 13:04Facebook has a popular "likeness" application, where you rate various lists of ten things from favorite to least favorite, and the application calculates how similar your friends' results are. I just took a quiz and went into my results page, and one of my other quizzes has "matches" on it that aren't on my friends-list. In fact, most of them are young, attractive female celebrities. Now, I'm not necessarily saying it's implausible that Hayden Panettiere has a Facebook account, or even that she took this quiz. I'm asking... why is she showing up on my results page?
I mean, I'm sure many a young nerd or geek would get a thrill out of seeing hirself described as "two peas in a pod" with a blonde teen starlet who also happens to be a lead on a popular sci-fi show, but one would think that the account owner might feel differently. Is someone gathering information from interviews to construct these results? Are they randomly generated? Is it a hack? Least likely, if the celebrities in question actually did take this quiz, why should their results be public, unlike everyone else's? Besides, why only young actresses? Surely among the masses there are those who want to know if they match a male actor, or their favorite author, or director, or musician, or politician?
The whole thing is just weird and off-putting.
I mean, I'm sure many a young nerd or geek would get a thrill out of seeing hirself described as "two peas in a pod" with a blonde teen starlet who also happens to be a lead on a popular sci-fi show, but one would think that the account owner might feel differently. Is someone gathering information from interviews to construct these results? Are they randomly generated? Is it a hack? Least likely, if the celebrities in question actually did take this quiz, why should their results be public, unlike everyone else's? Besides, why only young actresses? Surely among the masses there are those who want to know if they match a male actor, or their favorite author, or director, or musician, or politician?
The whole thing is just weird and off-putting.