Facebook: The Stupidity Epidemic

There's an epidemic of stupidity going on in the world today. It's called Facebook. Actually, it is on display on Facebook.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like Facebook. You can catch up with friends you never intended to talk to again after the fourth grade. You can see someone's kids who look just like him, but then again you don't even remember him anyway.

It's a great way to market products and services, because people are constantly "ADD'ing out" on Facebook.

It's a great way to post an emotion which no one cares about but you. "Today was a very pensive day for me." Really? Wonderful! You can have 10 people you don't really know agree or disagree with you about that.

People now are using Facebook to date. People will write things like, "I see you're friends with Bill. Me too! Haven't seen him in 30 years, but I thought we could get together and talk about Bill."

About a billion people are now on Facebook, and it's just brilliant. It really shows how intelligent our society as a whole has become.

Here's what's going on with Facebook besides posting emotions, and it's what prompted me to write this blog. I just saw someone post this on Facebook: "The family and I are about to go out of town. We're going to be away for 10 days in Europe starting on the 24th. The dog is at the sitters and, Oh God, I hope our house plants live!"

So here you are with probably hundreds of people -- your "friends" on Facebook -- who now know your house is going to be empty for 10 days. You have friends on there that you don't even really know exist, because some people ask everyone they can find to be friends just to be popular on Facebook. You don't really know a lot of these people though.

You could have a whole bunch of ex-cons as your Facebook friends. So when these people return from Europe to find that their house has been robbed, they will probably wonder how it happened. It's really not that hard to figure out!

On Facebook, you basically tell people where you live. Some people even put their home address on their profile. Are you kidding me? So when you tell everybody on Facebook that you and your family will be in Europe and the dog will be at a sitters, you are basically telling everyone on Facebook that your house is wide open for anyone to steal everything inside it.

You might as well give them instructions for how to get inside. "You have eight days, so if you can't pick the locks on the first day then you still have time to come back the next day and try again."

I mean, wake up! How ridiculously stupid have we become as a culture. We post all over the Internet where we're going to be and when.

It is like an engraved invitation to all the stalkers out there. "Hey, I'm going to be at Starbucks today from 3:00-5:00 pm. All stalkers please show up there and entertain me."

We have to stop being so open about everything. It's funny. In a society that's so otherwise paranoid, Facebook seems to be a place of security to so many people.

We're so nervous about real encounters with people. People are afraid to talk to strangers.

I can't tell you how many times I tell the people I'm coaching that they need to mingle and meet strangers every single day - and that strangers can become the best people to date. They are terrified to do that, but yet they will post on Facebook that they are leaving their house empty for 10 days while they go away on vacation.

Come on folks. Wake up! Be consistent. If you're going to post where you are at every hour of the day to hundreds or thousands of people, then you better start talking to strangers if you want to meet people. Really, you're inviting strangers into your house right now without even knowing it.

 

Follow David Wygant on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidwygant

Comments

[alexndrp]

03:52 AM on 04/14/2010

Very well written. I must say, this is a well put, well composed piece of work. But I could not help but notice the "share on facebook" button, right there below the title. So what I failed to see in the text was "This blog is ADDed on the stupid portal as well"...Oh well, maybe you forgot to mention that the stupid people you are writing about are also your audience, and their prime "stupidity" tool is your way of promoting your writing. Very good text though. *Like* ;)

[JustMeLe]

01:26 AM on 04/01/2010

*Like*

[petef59]

10:53 PM on 03/31/2010

FB's mafia Wars game surreptitiously added players names to an anti-healthcare reform petition. Anti-democratic in the extreme, under the guise of a 'social' building tool. Spooky: right out of Orwell.

[Debra Marie]

12:14 PM on 03/31/2010

I'm waiting for the development of an anti-social networking site

[plimsoul]

02:03 PM on 03/31/2010

That's a reaaly dumb idea. I cant believe you said that. I wouldnt use it. Nobody would use it. And, nobody likes you for suggesting it.



...I am being Anti-social.

[plimsoul]

02:17 PM on 03/31/2010

we already have that. Here is the link:

http://www.gop.com

[Debra Marie]

07:20 PM on 03/31/2010

LOL...I almost like you enough to add you as a friend, but I too, am anti-social. lol

[ecotopian]

11:33 AM on 03/30/2010

All I need to know about Facebook, I learned on http://www.lamebook.com/

[contradiction]

07:01 PM on 03/31/2010

I love that site.

[bobbiisadukefan]

10:50 AM on 03/30/2010

I hate social networking sites. I do not use Facebook. And it took them this long to realize that Facebook sucks!

[DennyCrane]

10:16 AM on 03/30/2010

This is why I don't use Facebook. People sure do love to talk about themselves and as this article pointed out, they love to reveal information about themselves that they really shouldn't. I don't use Facebook cause there's no way to have complete control over who sees your information and how it's used.

[BedRocka]

10:05 AM on 03/30/2010

C'mon David, not Facebook ... what happened to live and let live ... nothing wrong with that. I'm a pseudo follower of your blog on how to make friends, socializing and dating. I think the beating up on fb is like kicking a dead horse. It works for some it doesn't for others so just live and let live men!!

[antaeus]

12:27 PM on 03/30/2010

Isn't it possible to see the author's example of the foolish vacationing family as an attempt to help others who might be susceptible to the same folly, rather than simply seeing him as being critical?

[upbeatdem]

02:30 AM on 03/30/2010

You are so right! I don't "friend" people I don't know on Facebook. Still, it is shocking how many otherwise intelligent people I am connected to have announced that they are out of town for a certain amount of time. People just stop thinking when they go on Facebook,

[contradiction]

07:06 PM on 03/31/2010

Yeah - I only friend people I really know. And I don't have my address or telephone number on there. My city reflects the closest major city, not the actual town I live in. I never talk about vacation - because I don't go on vacation.

I'm very surprised though, how dumb seemingly intelligent people actually are. Everyone can make a typo from time to time, but I really start to judge my friends on their inability to differentiate between 'you're' and 'your', 'too' and 'to', 'there' and 'their' and they're', and their take on politics. Oh - and if they post the color of their bra as their status. That was really annoying.

[upbeatdem]

09:31 PM on 03/31/2010

I know! I didn't know what the bra color thing was all about when it started. Once I found out I couldn't believe how goofy it was! You do find out strange, sometimes disturbing things about people on Facebook. People really let their guard down.

[kapalabhati]

07:52 PM on 03/29/2010

How about the parents who put their kids' names on cute little sports or cheer logos on their cars? I don't get that.

[NABNYC]

04:59 PM on 03/29/2010

Actually, what people should be worried about is: lack of affordable healthcare; closing down schools, firing teachers and making college unaffordable for most of our children; loss of job security; loss of employer-provided healthcare and pensions; efforts to eliminate overtime and minimum wage; lack of enforcement of food or drug laws; genetically modified food that may be killing all the bees and us; cell phones and towers linked to brain tumors; idiocy caused by TV; isolation called by tyrannical workrules intended to keep employees from talking to each other, private transportation, and the isolation of most families from their neighbors; politicians who sell their votes and corporations who buy them; a supreme court stuffed with right-wingers intent on destroying the constitution; Republicans brandishing weapons and organizing their supporters to terrorize their communities; wars that never end, that are never declared, against countries we never heard about; a media or journalism that is owned by the corporations who buy our politicians and sell us tainted food, and only tell us about what star is getting a divorce. Foul water, foul air. A national diet that has radically increased the number of grossly obese people and children, with diabetes and heart disease showing up at younger and younger ages.

facebook doesn't even make the top 1000 things to worry about.

[Queen Sheba]

01:15 AM on 03/30/2010

Haha, well said.

[Coogabooga]

04:56 PM on 03/29/2010

Yeah, I really don't think it's matter of stupidity, but more of an inability to think abstractly about how easily information is spread on social networks. Sure, if I saw a person post that on their profile I would think "stupid", but an epidemic? I agree with Romek: you probably just know a lot of dumb people.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

04:21 PM on 03/29/2010

EXCELLENT!!!! I have been thinking this for months! People putting up personal things...birthdays, addresses, pictures....it's a hackers/identity thieves...heck ANY thieves wet dream!

And the sheer stupidity of people and the things they post.... are well, not that surprising. These people don't realize that employers, would be employers, and now employer CIA type guys actually scan these places for dirt.

Foolish.... can't wait till this thing goes away!!!

[way2muchsense]

04:18 PM on 03/29/2010

Nobody gets friended by me unless I know them personally - actual meatspace friends and family. My profile data, rather general in nature, is restricted to just the subset of those to whom I have extended or accepted a friend invite. And still, I am very careful about what I say there. Problem solved.

[Fawn McManigal]

03:26 PM on 03/29/2010

I agree that there is a stupidity epidemic. But I relate it more to the idiotic videos on YouTube that receive an alarming number of views. Is that really what it's coming to? No wonder people feel comfortable telling the world when their home will be unprotected--as if their presence qualified as protection to begin with. Maybe they are assuming that no one is smart enough to find it.