Friendster used to be interesting. Decent people with decent taste, whatever decent meant at that time, used it for the very reason why it was created in the first place. I think it was not a time when every chance you have of opening your inbox you first have to sift through a pile of messages with content designed to awaken the libido from within. It was not a time when unknown women from out of nowhere, mostly deprived of sufficient clothing while sporting queer names, view your profile. It was not a time when the bulletin board became the trash bin of—surprise, surprise—trash surveys. But like any other John Lloyd Cruz flick, God forbid, it had to end. Well, it had to.
As spam-bots and douches flooded the social networking site like an unstoppable torrent, the network's Great Depression soon followed. It left in its wake lifeless profiles floating aimlessly in the void. At first, the habit of using the website was so good there should have been a law against it. But now that it has become a wet market, you might be smelling the stench leaping out of your computer monitor. The habit has now become so bad, or so backward, that there should be a law against it, much to the chagrin of those who still find the site quite amusing and much to the delight of those who find the same rather disturbing.
Friendster is American history. Or a footnote.
David Roth writes that Friendster is now a galaxy of ghost planets thriving with dead profiles and robots. In America, the social networking site is now treated more like a verb, only that it is in the past tense. As in finished. Emptied is an overstatement as Roth also observes that hundreds and thousands of new accounts are still being created each day. Not surprisingly, he goes on to say that Filipinos comprise a bulk of those who "[obey] the apparently universal human impulse to create colorful, flirty online profiles for themselves". Friendster may now be as Jurassic as George Bush on steroids for people living at the western end, but for Filipinos the iron remains as hot as—I can't help myself with this one—Gloria and Mike mightily making out with all their juices somewhere in the shadows of Gil Puyat. Or something to that effect, but that's another story. Suffice it to say, though, that Friendster is now in deep organic fertilizer in the United States that the New York Times even devoted a fitting eulogy for the website. I bet its epitaph should be complete two years from today.
In our country, it's not the same story. Contrary to the Western experience, Filipinos continue to flock to Friendster. Shapes and sizes of them heed the siren call to create profiles, theirs or otherwise, in order to appease the itch from within. Their numbers swell regularly, which is not surprising for the company to erect its own offices here in the country. Erect. There you go. I've seen some hilarious profiles that I do not even know whether to laugh or to cry at the very sight of them. I've seen some profiles, too, which make me wonder if Bathala was truly kind enough to the human race. Had He—or She; I leave the theist feminists to debate on this—been truly kind enough, He or She would have showered mankind with unmistakable perfection, or completeness, so much so that some of us would no longer have to publicize our contact numbers and post photos taken in an obscure Polaroid express shop just to make the opposite sex ogle and covet our very skins. Or so much so that some of us would no longer sacrifice privacy all before the altar of the wanton need for attention. But that's definitely asking too much for Someone who might not even be there.
I do not know if some others might turn juramentado the moment they bear witness to all these desperate measures wandering in cyberspace, but what I am familiar with is that some friends I know despise Friendster profiles littered with nothing but pure uninterrupted bullshit. I know some who pronounce incantations and curses to those who own profiles with anything but the genuine marks of being a homo sapien. I can't blame them. They understand aesthetics in far more imaginative ways.
I haven't given up my Friendster account entirely yet although I still update the contents of my profile, albeit rarely. I do check new messages every once in a while and approve pending comments—or testimonials, whichever way they call it now—which, by the way, are hard to come-by these days. On occasions where I do get one, there is a monumental chance that the comment appears as an embedded image of a girl sitting on the bed which prompts or hopes to prompt the user to click on the image taking you to an external website thereafter. And the deed is done. The next thing you know, you get tens if not hundreds of complaints from your friends in your list, some of whom you barely even recognize, telling you why the fuck you've been flooding their bloody inbox.
Or when I do receive new messages, there is a great deal that the messages entice you to flirt with someone in a virtual lounge elsewhere. Or you can bet your ass on it that some of the messages are "chain letters", threatening that if you decide not to pass the message to someone else in your list, someone in your circle is going to die. Or as the late George Carlin puts it, expire or pass away. The message does not state how the person is to expire, but there is a high probability that the very sight of the neon outfits of Kuya Germs could make you suffer from a severe case of diarrhea, one that is beyond the mercy and salvation offered by any toilet bowl in this known universe, causing you to palpitate until Kuya Boy, in a sudden burst of rage and who happens not to show any signs of actually being a boy, accidentally strangles you for shitting all over his face.
Which translates to this: gullibility is one of humanity's timeless signs of intellectual demise; the downhill struggle is endless.
From the way things are right now with Friendster, it is not at all shocking that others have abandoned ship and migrated to greener pastures, Facebook being one of them. MySpace being another, quite apart from Multiply. My better half has her own multiply account, to which she is thankful, as we speak, of having her site being advertised here. But of course! It's the least I can do.
Friendster developers might have been licking their wounds these past months in their attempt to mend a laceration that cuts deeply across their brainchild. And some of us are more than willing to lick it up good, too.
As spam-bots and douches flooded the social networking site like an unstoppable torrent, the network's Great Depression soon followed. It left in its wake lifeless profiles floating aimlessly in the void. At first, the habit of using the website was so good there should have been a law against it. But now that it has become a wet market, you might be smelling the stench leaping out of your computer monitor. The habit has now become so bad, or so backward, that there should be a law against it, much to the chagrin of those who still find the site quite amusing and much to the delight of those who find the same rather disturbing.
Friendster is American history. Or a footnote.
David Roth writes that Friendster is now a galaxy of ghost planets thriving with dead profiles and robots. In America, the social networking site is now treated more like a verb, only that it is in the past tense. As in finished. Emptied is an overstatement as Roth also observes that hundreds and thousands of new accounts are still being created each day. Not surprisingly, he goes on to say that Filipinos comprise a bulk of those who "[obey] the apparently universal human impulse to create colorful, flirty online profiles for themselves". Friendster may now be as Jurassic as George Bush on steroids for people living at the western end, but for Filipinos the iron remains as hot as—I can't help myself with this one—Gloria and Mike mightily making out with all their juices somewhere in the shadows of Gil Puyat. Or something to that effect, but that's another story. Suffice it to say, though, that Friendster is now in deep organic fertilizer in the United States that the New York Times even devoted a fitting eulogy for the website. I bet its epitaph should be complete two years from today.
In our country, it's not the same story. Contrary to the Western experience, Filipinos continue to flock to Friendster. Shapes and sizes of them heed the siren call to create profiles, theirs or otherwise, in order to appease the itch from within. Their numbers swell regularly, which is not surprising for the company to erect its own offices here in the country. Erect. There you go. I've seen some hilarious profiles that I do not even know whether to laugh or to cry at the very sight of them. I've seen some profiles, too, which make me wonder if Bathala was truly kind enough to the human race. Had He—or She; I leave the theist feminists to debate on this—been truly kind enough, He or She would have showered mankind with unmistakable perfection, or completeness, so much so that some of us would no longer have to publicize our contact numbers and post photos taken in an obscure Polaroid express shop just to make the opposite sex ogle and covet our very skins. Or so much so that some of us would no longer sacrifice privacy all before the altar of the wanton need for attention. But that's definitely asking too much for Someone who might not even be there.
I do not know if some others might turn juramentado the moment they bear witness to all these desperate measures wandering in cyberspace, but what I am familiar with is that some friends I know despise Friendster profiles littered with nothing but pure uninterrupted bullshit. I know some who pronounce incantations and curses to those who own profiles with anything but the genuine marks of being a homo sapien. I can't blame them. They understand aesthetics in far more imaginative ways.
I haven't given up my Friendster account entirely yet although I still update the contents of my profile, albeit rarely. I do check new messages every once in a while and approve pending comments—or testimonials, whichever way they call it now—which, by the way, are hard to come-by these days. On occasions where I do get one, there is a monumental chance that the comment appears as an embedded image of a girl sitting on the bed which prompts or hopes to prompt the user to click on the image taking you to an external website thereafter. And the deed is done. The next thing you know, you get tens if not hundreds of complaints from your friends in your list, some of whom you barely even recognize, telling you why the fuck you've been flooding their bloody inbox.
Or when I do receive new messages, there is a great deal that the messages entice you to flirt with someone in a virtual lounge elsewhere. Or you can bet your ass on it that some of the messages are "chain letters", threatening that if you decide not to pass the message to someone else in your list, someone in your circle is going to die. Or as the late George Carlin puts it, expire or pass away. The message does not state how the person is to expire, but there is a high probability that the very sight of the neon outfits of Kuya Germs could make you suffer from a severe case of diarrhea, one that is beyond the mercy and salvation offered by any toilet bowl in this known universe, causing you to palpitate until Kuya Boy, in a sudden burst of rage and who happens not to show any signs of actually being a boy, accidentally strangles you for shitting all over his face.
Which translates to this: gullibility is one of humanity's timeless signs of intellectual demise; the downhill struggle is endless.
From the way things are right now with Friendster, it is not at all shocking that others have abandoned ship and migrated to greener pastures, Facebook being one of them. MySpace being another, quite apart from Multiply. My better half has her own multiply account, to which she is thankful, as we speak, of having her site being advertised here. But of course! It's the least I can do.
Friendster developers might have been licking their wounds these past months in their attempt to mend a laceration that cuts deeply across their brainchild. And some of us are more than willing to lick it up good, too.
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