Are You A Highly Suggestible Moron?

Big Shiny Red Button

Big Shiny Red Button

Do you ever get the feeling that people on Facebook will join anything they can click with a mouse? Ever get the feeling that these are not the things people actually care about, but just pathetically bored people who just want an excuse to click things with their mouse? Ever seen that online joke where the website shows a great big shiny red button. Above that is text that says something like “Want to know how to keep an idiot busy for hours? Click this button to find out!” When you click the button it just changes the font or something. Facebook is turning into a more involved version of that same joke. It used to be about networking, but not so much anymore.

I Blame Facebook
Facebook had a great idea to allow business, bands, and whoever else to start fan pages. Then people started using that as a way to share a funny line of text. “Click here if you want someone to pull your finger.” Or even the ones that take advantage of your moral outrage. “Click here if you think America has lost it’s way.” I have even seen one that pulls at your heart strings with “Click like if you love your daughter”. Of course some may say that last one has more to do with dealing with the guilt of spending more time clicking stupid like buttons than spending time with your children, but I will save that debate for another time. It got to the point that Facebook caved. Instead of doing something to separate being an actual fan of something or agreeing with an idea, they just switched the fan with a like. The problem is that this dumbed things down instead of raising things to new levels.

Stupid Pages For Stupid People?
The original idea was to find people with like minds that you may want to network with. Do you really want to network with other people who “Don’t like to be lied to?” What kind of important business is there to talk about on the fan (now like) page for “Can I have a coke? Is Pepsi alright?” or “Uh, Is monopoly money alright?” Not much I’m willing to bet. But what about if you want to “fan” the unsigned band Mongrel? Well now you can only “like” them. I think that is pretty lame.

There’s A Shiny Red Button!?
The reality is that Facebook users have shown that they love to push the shiny red button. Pushing that shiny red button will keep the idiots busy for hours. That is fine. The problem is that Facebook doesn’t differentiate. This might increase the levels of brainless fun, but it decreases the levels of powerful networking. Go through the things you once clicked that you were a fan of. Take a look at the walls of every page you have “liked”. How many others are part of that group? How dead is the wall? People only cared enough to click a mouse. They didn’t care enough to discuss the topic at hand with other people who think that way.

Don’t Be A Joiner
As much as it kills me to say it, this is not the fault of the “joiners”. Most Facebook users are nothing more than brainless joiners. Even otherwise smart people turn into brainless joiners when they log into the site. Facebook needs to do something quick to not just cater to that, but to cater to the service as a networking tool as well. Their mistake was trading one for the other. Instead of just switching everything to “like”, they should have given people a choice to keep the “Fan” button. The like pages should have no wall and very little features. Those people have shown they have no interest in anything other than the initial click of that mouse. The networkers (which are many times the same people) have shown they DO want to network. So give them those tools. The important thing though is for Facebook to differentiate the two.

Everyone Is An Idiot, Even Me
So in closing, most people are highly suggestible morons. Idiots are the majority. If Facebook doesn’t want to be the next MySpace (or worse the next Friendster) they need to work hard to fix this. Otherwise the idiots will get bored and move on to the next big shiny red button. Think you can avoid just sitting here clicking a big shiny red button? I don’t. In fact, if you CLICK HERE you can take a test to see how well you can avoid clicking the big shiny red button.