The face of evil...

Facebook is evil. EVIL!!!

My birthday passed by recently, which is nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact that I had spent the whole day wondering why I didn't get any calls or SMSes from friends, or even emails. But since I'm not that much of a party animal, I was still pleasantly, erm... pleased by the few SMSes I got.

"I guess everyone's busy with life..." I thought.

And then, the next day, I got a call from Warren, who wished me and starting chatting. Then, I told him that I had a nice quiet birthday (Elaine brought me to dinner at Euro Deli - my first time there!) and mentioned that I was nice of him to call since nobody else did.

He then pointed out that I had quite a lot of birthday wishes on my Facebook wall.

OH!

SHIT!

So I quickly logged onto Facebook when I got home that night (I can't access Facebook from my office PC. In fact, I can't access the Internet. For security, you see...). Lo and behold - lots of well wishes completely surrounded by about 13 million other messages.

Ok, I decided I'd reply and say thanks - but since it's all written on a wall, I have to go to each entry and type a reply. But I'd end up having to type essentially the same messages back to everyone - and the new facebook interface is soooo slow that it takes ages to do anything.

And so, I got lazy and just sat there, looking at the 20 or 30 friend requests (half of which are from people I either don't know or whom I'd rather not get reacquainted with). Then, I inspected the 500 or so requests I had received for joining new groups or playing new games, etc... My wall was also completely plastered with updates of what my other friends had been doing or what-not.

And then, I suddenly remembered why I stopped using Friendster, and why I'm very sparingly using Facebook nowadays (whenever I do log on): because it's TIME CONSUMING.

There are just way too many notifications and updates to read or groups to join that I get tired just looking at my damn Facebook home page. And because I'm one of those people who feel bad when I don't reply emails, phonecalls or SMSes, it's particularly stressful because of the sheer number of requests, invitations and wall messages that I end up not responding to.

And even as a means of keeping in touch, Facebook is seriously impersonal.

Sigh.

And the amount of spam is ridiculous. Although it is initially fun to receive funny videos from friends, it's worse when you get the same video sent to you by seven different people. It's even worse when your friends spam you with stuff that doesn't even interest you. For crying out loud, I've even been approached by people trying to RECRUIT me to work in another company.

Next thing you know, I'll be getting advice on how I can increase the size of my manhood.

Facebook's new user interface is also a completely convoluted mess - and it's mostly because it tries to be everything. It tries to be a chat program. It tries to be a messaging program. It tries to be a photo viewing program.

And the best part is that, when viewed as individual components, each of Facebook's features are slow and poorly implemented. There's a good reason why people don't use Facebook for really important, time-sensitive announcements or for work-related stuff. Because it's a mess.

Which is the exact opposite of Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger and the whole family of minimalistic but highly intuitive Google applications.

Yes, Google may be the next big evil corporation, but Facebook is the face of evil.