Socially|Mundane

Tried a little experiment at FaceBook. Fail. I had a faceBoook account under my real name for a few years, but never paid much attention to it. It just struck me as a "cleaner" version of that train-wreck called "MySpace". Over those couple of years I've received a few "friend" requests, of those 90% were people I know or knew way back when. But once "friended" that was about the extent of it.


There are a lot of "violations" to the Second Life Terms of Service (TOS) that we all agree to when creating an account, including the provision of a real email address among many other things... like your real name and address. Yeah. Right. I do it because it's the right thing to do.

There have been many news stories in the blogosphere, SLogosphere and "media" about accounts on FaceBook being deleted or otherwise locked-down because a "real name" wasn't used - I won;t bother linking to all of those. However, there are multitudes of Second Life enthusiasts who take their SL identity outside of the grid into the real world as they say. Including FaceBook.

So I decided to blatantly ignore the FaceBook TOS like so many others and I created a second account under this obviously false persona (though I have registered "Ari Blackthorne" as a business name in first life, so technically it's a "real entity".)

Then in about an hour or so after that registration, I received a friend request from someone who's name I hadn't recognized. On reviewing it, I could clearly see a Second Life avatar used in that person's profile picture. I noticed they were part of a Second Life group on FaceBook and for kicks I joined that group. Plopped in a single one-line post that simply said:

Priwet. Okay, I'm not really Russki.

Within minutes, people started adding me as their friend, which I must then go in and "approve". My email box is becoming spammed with approval requests from the system for all these people adding me as a friend. Then a few of them spamm their own friend lists to get (me) to join some FB game about Vampires (never was interested in the Vampire scene in SL, certainly not outside of SL) - or some techno-music group (I prefer Haydn and Beethoven, thank you) or some Magic group as a "fan" (A fan of something or someone I've never even heard of?)

Wow.
Okay... uh... just 'wow'.

Is this all people do on FaceBook? Collect friends of people they have no idea whothey are or what they like without the faintest idea of what their interests are and just start throwing web page URLs and group invites and other crap at them?

It is 24-hours since that first friendship offer and approval. I now have 33 friends on FaceBook, only one of whom I know at all - and that's only because I friended them first. The other 32 - all SLers are names I have never, ever heard of. Not once. Never seen the name even in some obscure blog post or comment anywhere. Ever.

Has any of them even once 'welcomed me"? Even written on my FB "Wall" to say "hello"? Even IM'd me in-world for anything - ANYTHING? FaceBook is a complete joke. It's about one-upping the next person to gain more friends and then to look "active" by spamming them all with garbage. There is zero-social-interaction whatsoever.

I mean c'mon, it's a robot circus. I have never met Robin Linden or  Torley, or Sidewinder, or Blue of the Lindens or even Prokofy Neva, Anna Tsiolkovsky, or Adric Antfarm or Taeru Nino or any of a lot of people "in person" - but I consider them acquaintances because we have actually communicated directly to one another a few times in-world or off the grid. These are names I know and (I would hope) my name is at least somewhat familiar to them.

But now here I am with 33 "friends" who aren't. On the SL grid, people actually talk to one another, greet and do activities with each other. Of course there are a lot of bots on the grid also. But unlike Second Life where you accidentally run into bots all over the place and deal with that frustration, in FaceBook, the damned bots come find you and do nothing but throw stuff at you that you never asked for and more likely than not: is so far outside your realm of interest it might even be irritating.

I think I'll go in and delete that FaceBook account now. No... wait!  I'll let it sit for three years the same way as I have with my "real" FB account - just so see if any of these people so much as "poke" me.

Face book is a joke. When compared to Second Life and throwing both into the same sentence as the words "social" and "legitimate", I'm sorry but Second Life wins hands-down.

On the grid of Second Life it's a different story. You actually make friends and acquaintances.