Idiotic Facebook Groups!
Just when I thought Facebook couldn't piss me off anymore
You know, I thought I was done (atleast for the week) ranting about Facebook, but there's only so many idiotic and useless --even down-right confusing-- group invitations and very suttle announcements on my Live Feed [E.g. <moron> has joined the group <insert idiotic group name with each letter capitalized each new word>] before I again have to vent and cry out before I go Postal and start shooting all the PCs in a 2km radius. Now before I had this blog, I have vented at various points in time. Those of you who might follow me on Twitter (insert shameless plug here - @augrunt) will have had the pleasure of experiencing these first hand but it still hasn't caused the change of mentality I had hoped for... Idiots continue to be just that, Idiots.
I have ranted, I have tried to teach (I made a Facebook Group dedicated to the awareness of useless/idiotic groups) yet my Live Feed continues to eat away at my patience. It makes me think, what is it that actually makes them join said groups? Is it the promise of being a part of breaking a record that doesn't even have the support of said record keepers? or the promise of new features that is not available to the majority of Facebook users such as the Dislike button (as much as I want it, it doesn't exist people!) or even the possibility of having a new theme to separate your profile from the vast uniformity that everyone else is subjected to? or could it simply be --if we apply Occam's razor -- that they are just idiots?
Whatever the reasons, people must understand (or atleast try to) the other popular idiom that actually goes against Occam's Razor and that is If it's too good to be true, it usually isn't true. There is no magical group out there that can give you special permissions or abilities (unless it's an App and even then it's pretty limited -- you can't change a whole site layout with a limited and restricted API like Facebook's). So stop joining these groups!
Let me break away off topic for a bit to actually illustrate how humanity never ceases to amaze me -- Back in 07 when I used to work for (don't kill me!) Telstra -- Specifically the now defunct Trading Post Paper, I would get people ringing me telling me about how they got scammed out of $5,000 ~ $8,000. Now, I wasn't customer service but when these calls happened to spill over to me 1 out of 10 of them were regarding scams. Now get this, they would throw $5,000+ without question or scrutiny to people who would advertise a near-new 2006 Toyota Camry [valued at $28,000] via Good-Luck-Getting-a-Refund Western Union (mistake #1). Some of these people would get the money together by getting Loans and get this, they hadn't even seen the car yet (mistake #2), They just took the guy's word that he was selling it from England (mistake #3). I would be gob-smacked and too the amazement of my Team Leader and workers who happened to be seated next to me, I would usually (always) question the customer's intelligence and would always ask what they were thinking.
The best one I had was when this guy was so convinced I was trying to scam him out of a good deal by telling him to ignore it. It was like he didn't wish to comprehend it was a scam, It was a $12,000 BMW 2007 model. He did the right thing by ringing up (I guess his smarter more intelligent friends told him to call) but he would not listen to me, telling me "I was wrong" -- Let me point out though, the ad followed a typical scam template and he was, yep! you guessed it! Based in England trying to get rid of the car before his "wife" divorces him. I had to stress to him repeatedly and only when I threatned him and gave him the idiom I like to live by, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" did he finally admit defeat. He really, really wanted that car and that scammer was so close to getting a big fat untraceable $12,000.
Back to topic. You might say to me, "Mate, your all wrong. I would scrutinize $12,000 but facebook groups don't warrant that much scrutiny" and I will look at you like a cow looks at an oncoming train. Who's worried about the money, pal? Too be honest I can recouperate $12,000 if I ever lost it. I might have to work my ass off for 2 years and cut costs but it can be done. However, the pride and humiliation of being outsmarted or tricked? I can't replace that -- not as easily as the money. So when you do join your stupid group that promises you the ability to give you 500+ more friends. You just publically advertised you got done in, you might not have lost anything, you might have just inconvinienced yourself but-- Too the eyes of many, most importantly, me. You have just lost a bit of respect in our eyes and its the people like you that encourages these crafty con-men and con-women to keep advertising their brand new cheap cars and keep on creating groups to clutter my Live Feed and get rid of the important announcements, Like someone finding a poor baby lamb for my farm.
I hate useless facebook groups... I might just create a group about how much I hate groups, that will show them -- That will show them all!
