Maybe I just hit a statistically inevitable bad stretch. I don’t know. But last night, it seemed like every other entry on my Facebook friends feed was a photo that was nothing more than an image of words. I won’t embarrass anyone by citing a particular example; I’m pretty sure that anybody who’s on Facebook knows what I mean.
I do not mean visual puns like Imperial Walker, which at times border on brilliant. Nor even the genre I guess we call “demotivational” posters, which bring a painful grin now and then. I’ll gen up an example of my own:
Why is this better than:
“They build too low, who build beneath the stars.” –Edward Young 1681-1765.
I have to grin: Here’s Jeff Duntemann, the Visual Developer guy, arguing for plain text against graphics. But hey, it’s text, and nothing more than text. If quotes had OK buttons (or, better yet, Cancel buttons) I might feel otherwise. They don’t. Text is sufficient.
There’s another problem: In no case was the text in the image the words of the person who posted it. They’re all well-worn platitudes or slogans or political nanorants, just as you’d see on a bumper sticker. That, in fact, is what they remind me of the most. Last night I realized that I was seeing the bumperstickerization of Facebook.
I did not sign up for Facebook to drown in a sea of virtual bumper stickers. They call it a “friends list” because, theoretically, the people there are friends. I like to hear what my friends are thinking, feeling, reading, writing, coding, making, or otherwise doing. I don’t mind pictures of your cats, your dogs, your kids, your vacations, or the stuff you’re building in the basement. That’s what Facebook is for.
Are your daily travails more important than quotes from Abraham Lincoln, FDR, or Oscar Wilde? Damitall, yes. I already have Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. I used to read it like a novel. (I’m nutty that way.) If you must quote someone, quote yourself. And do it in text. Pixels Are For Pictures.
Now, weren’t you making cannoli last night? Or calling CQ on six meters? You’re my friend. If I didn’t hear about it, well, it’s not for lack of wanting.
What does “calling CQ on six meters” actually mean?
It’s a ham radio thing. Six meters is the wavelength of a radio band–50-54 MHz–and calling “CQ” is ham radio shorthand for “anybody out there wanna talk?” A lot of techies my age are hams, because when we were young computers were the size of NY apartments and cost only a little less than battleships. Radios were the prevailing tech for tinkering. I still do it, though not as much as I did in the early 70s.
[…] appears to have been designed specifically to facilitate the enforcement of tribal dogma. Most of the bumper-sticker entries I see on Facebook are precisely this: Like and share–or you’re not really a loyal party member, […]