Get A Life: Social Networking Sites And Why They Don’t Work For You

By Ned Hepburn on June 25th, 2009

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Let’s face it. A hundred years ago it was commonplace for us to kill our own food. If you went back in time – Doc Brown style – and started talking to Johnny Mustachey or Franky HatWearer about “Twitter” they’d probably punch you in the face. Or shoot you, and rightfully so.

While it might seem like the right thing to do to join a social networking site, write down what you do, and upload a few pictures of yourself, it’s not exactly a mans place. In fact, I’m under generalizing. It shouldn’t be in the cultural lexicon in the first place. And while we here at Manolith hope that you appreciate that we are in fact a blog ourselves and speaking somewhat in hyperbole about the whole “inter web” thing, we must assure you that nothing – not a damn thing – will change the fact that you just “poked” someone.

Friendster

Friendster was the girl you had a crush on freshman year of high school. She sat two rows ahead of you in science class, and one day you walked her home from school and you talked about “life” and she opened up a whole new world for you. Sadly, she was incredibly slow on the uptake, and you soon realized that while she may have been the one to set you down the road of internet profiles, she was sadly not the one for you. She lives now in Omaha with six cats.

Facebook

Facebook is to social networking what Mariah Carey is to ears. Sure, it can do a lot of things. But do you really need that? Why does it have to be so fucking cheesy? I don’t care. I just want to passive aggressively look at my ex girlfriends’ photos once every six months or so. I don’t really CARE what she’s into or who she’s dating now. And I don’t give a shit about 99% of the people I went to school with a million years ago. Those guys thought Creed was awesome – why do I give a shit now?

Myspace

Myspace is the Detroit of the internet. Nobody goes there anymore due to… well… I have no fucking clue. Maybe it’s the millions of ads. Maybe its the fact that I have to type in a ‘Captcha’ fucking thing any time I want to send a message, leave a comment, or move on my chair. It’s retarded. It’s like Fort Knox being run by Rain Man. What the hell happened? Remember when this used to be cool? Really: Myspace used to be kind of cool. Well – “cool” in the same way that “pogs” used to be “cool”. Then Tila Tequila happened.

Twitter

Are you fucking serious? This is literally the old saying about giving an infinite number of monkeys an infinite typewriters and one of them will produce Shakespeare. What good has come out of Twitter? One picture of Demi Moore’s ass? Puh-leaze. Well, I did get laid off of Twitter one time. Don’t ask how. Maybe that’s the only good thing.

Tumblr

Tumblr is the Steve Jobs of blogging. Sure, it’s smart and people friendly, but it also refuses to take off its black turtleneck and Seinfeld jeans. And you have to keep going with all the new models – no matter what – otherwise you’re obsolete. There’s no option to turn off Tumblarity – Tumblr’s heinous popularity based scale? What the fuck? Can’t I just go back to looking at pictures of cats and pictures ripped from 4Chan? The site turned into that movie Mean Girls.

Flickr

So let me get this straight. I can upload all these pictures on this site where 30% of it is porn, 30% of it is “interesting things” some ‘tardo took with their digital camera they got for Christmas, and the other 40% is Spring Break pictures uploaded by one user in 2006?

Digg

It claims to be an aggregator of the most popular and upcoming sites on the internet but I see NO mention of “asian teens” nor ANY semblance of pornography. You lose, Digg. No pornography? No me! Good day, sir!

Amazon

So after the initial shock of “the internet” wears off you realize that you can actually SPEND SOME FUCKING MONEY OH MY GOD. And this site will teach you – in some sort of cruel yet zen like state – that no matter how awesome it may feel to feel like you haven’t bought something because you don’t have a person in front of you asking for money, you can rack up some serious debt by going on Amazon in any state of inebriation past “tipsy”. Did you really, really honest to God need those ‘I Love Pussy’ sweatpants, the Motley Crue t-shirt, handmade marshmallows, and the $75 bottle of absinthe? You did?

eBay

Oh great. The world had a yard sale. You can buy anything from cars to kidneys on eBay but there’s no guarantee they won’t smell like pee. At least at a regular garage sale you know whether things smell like pee or not.