Just last weekend I noticed it. I looked at my Facebook page and I thought, Facebook is broken. This isn’t the Facebook I signed up for. When I signed up for Facebook I wanted to talk to people. I wanted to share with family and friends. I wanted to know how many kids you have and if they made honor roll. Is junior in the school play or did Susie make the soccer team. I wanted to see your vacation pictures. I wanted to know what everyone else is doing this weekend or if you saw that movie and liked it.
What I did learn when I looked at my Facebook last week was that Alan likes Tough Mudder. I also found out from Joni’s your-ecard that sometimes she takes baths because it’s harder to drink wine in the shower. I also learned from Facebook that there are a lot of kooky pictures in favor of gun ownership. I discovered that Larry is really good at Song Pop. Apparently Samantha has a gambling problem because she goes to the Facebook casino almost every day. I also had no idea Michael was a farmer that needed me to buy him a pig. Apparently George Takei has a lot more friends than I do. Occasionally you may even see stuff about a friend being a half-assed author and posting the link to his blog all the time.
Facebook used to be the social network. We would actually post things about our lives and comment on or ask questions about the pictures and stories our friends and family posted. Now when I visit Facebook all I seem to see is an endless string of re-posts and advertisements my friends have signed up for. I’m as guilty as anyone. Some days I want to join in the Facebook fun but I don’t have anything new going on in my life so I’ll gladly borrow a bit of brilliance from Sulu and re-post it on my wall hoping to get a laugh or a like.
In my title I suggested that we fix Facebook if only for a day. My idea is that there should be a National No Re-Post Day on Facebook. It will be a day when we as the citizens of Facebook get back to our roots. Let’s take one day, on a weekend, when we do most of our online communicating, and spend the day not re-posting or liking ads but sharing on Facebook. Let’s post pictures of ourselves and our kids. Let’s talk about memories of high school. Let’s tell everyone where we’re going on vacation. Maybe we could even share our mood using words instead of a re-posted picture. I choose Saturday May 4th as National No Re-Post Day.
Irony of all ironies though, if we’re going to make this work we’re going to have to re-post this a lot. Enough to get a viral thing going in three weeks. I will personally take responsibility to post this to George Takei, because if he’s on board it’s a done deal. I need all of you to do the rest. Below this hit the Facebook Share button and if you’re on WordPress hit the re-blog button. If you’re on Twitter please re-tweet. Follow me on Facebook or follow my blog for reminders leading up to the big day. I’ve also created an event on Facebook that you can join. Just click here for Facebook National No Re-Post Day. With a few clicks we can all take back Facebook on Saturday May 4th. (Yeah, I’m completely serious. Let’s do this)
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