Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
Sorry, I&#x27;m simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people&#x27;s attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that&#x27;s in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this.<p>Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken&#x27; zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, then get back to their vapid entertainment.<p>People would make a game out of who could play the longest in the arcade on one quarter. With $5, a savvy gamer could spend <i>all day</i> staring at lights and hearing beeps.<p>The world survived, thrived, and devised ever more devious and insidious ways to hook your mind. We weathered Everquest and the MMORPGs. Psychedelic drugs. Outrage didn&#x27;t stop those from spreading long and wide.<p>My uncle lost years to Everquest. When he came up for air he found the world just as he left it. Now he manages his gaming habits just like everyone else.<p>Out of all the pseudo-addictive things people want to complain about, we&#x27;re picking on Facebook? The thing that actually holds old friendships together and provides endless opportunities to interact <i>with other people</i> that you would have never done otherwise? Or is the argument that every time someone gets the urge to play Scrabble, they need to coordinate a face-to-face game instead of just loading up Words with Friends?<p>C&#x27;mon. I guess bombastic apocalyptic bullshit will never go out of style.