Tag Archives: Zuckerberg

The New Facebook Emojis: Dislike!

Posted on October 10, 2015 | 21 comments

Picture courtesy of Facebook Inc. and techcrunch.com

Picture courtesy of Facebook Inc. and techcrunch.com

If you live in Spain or Ireland you’ll soon have the privilege of telling someone that their Facebook post makes you angry or sad or if you love it or laughed at it. Perfect! Just what we need; more ways to express our imaginary feelings with fewer words to our imaginary friends! Instead of actually using words you can now show your friends your feelings with “emojis” that accurately portray the whole range of complex human emotions. Apparently Yay and Wow are very important emotions and obviously too long as words for people to type.

First of all, why do Ireland and Spain get to be the test markets? I have nothing against those two wonderful countries, but why are they the test markets? Hey Zuckerberg, how about you use that big brain of yours to figure out a way for each country to have their own emojis appropriate for their own culture. That doesn’t sound too hard does it?

Secondly, there’s a whole range of other emojis that I’d love to see on FB. How about a WTF? emoji? I can imagine that one would get a lot of use. Or maybe the I had no idea you were a radical political nutjob emoji. That one would come in handy a lot. Or maybe the STOP SENDING ME GAME INVITES OR I’M UNFRIENDING YOU!!!  emoji. How about the Holy crap! Enough pictures of your dog/cat, don’t you have anything else in your life? emoji.

What I’d really like to see though is a feature where you can take selfies of you showing different feelings and then you can dial those up and put a little emoji of your own face with the appropriate emotion. That would seem far more personal than the plain smiley faces.

Picture credit: randomoverload.org

Picture credit: randomoverload.org

What really gets my goat (where’s the getting your goat emoji?) is that because Zuckerberg is a high I.Q., high end of the spectrum Asperger’s guy he’s created a website that forces the rest of the world to interact emotionally in the same limited way as him. Most people have heard the term Asperger’s. It is a disorder with a very wide range from autistic people with no ability to communicate at even the most basic level to high functioning, very intelligent people who have difficulty interpreting the emotional cues of others such as tone of voice, posture and facial expression.

To be honest, I have no idea if Zuckerberg is Asperger’s in any way, but he did develop Facebook so he could talk to girls in college. Now he’s trying to boil all our emotions down into five simple smiley faces. But for someone with Asperger’s, that might be perfect because that’s how they interpret emotions, broadly without a lot of nuance.

When I started writing this today I had no intent of getting preachy or educating anyone on Asperger’s syndrome. My intent was to point out that social media of all types may connect us with more people, which is great, but if we lean on social media as a relationship surrogate we are crippling ourselves emotionally as a society. I can imagine a future in which people have lost the ability to have genuine emotions because of a lack of real, face to face interaction and we’ll just marry the people who gave us the most “likes” or heart emojis.

So who wants to hit the WTF? emoji now? And what Facebook emojis would you like to see?

If you enjoy #ThePhilFactor please share it on Facebook or Twitter (ironic, right?) by hitting the share buttons below. Have a great Saturday and get out there and emoji the hell out of someone you love! ~Phil

21 Comments

Posted in Humor, pop culture, Relationships, Social Media

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Zuckerberg: Facebook’s Evil Overlord

Posted on October 3, 2015 | 6 comments

Remember about ten or fifteen years ago when chain letters/email were the bane of our inbox? Well, them and that poor Nigerian Prince who needs help transferring an enormous sum of money to your bank account. Last weekend I reached my breaking point and it wasn’t because, brace yourselves, I found out that the Nigerian prince is a scam. No, it was because not one, not two, or not even three, but several of my Facebook friends posted the “Facebook Chain letter.”

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No, that picture below is not it. That I did copy and paste. We’ve all seen the Facebook chain letter. I tried to find one on someone’s “timeline” but couldn’t. It’s almost as if someone removed or hid them. I smell Zuckerberg! That little weasel has been hiding and deleting evidence ever since me and Snowden caught on to his little scam. What’s his little scam? First, he’s the Nigerian Prince. That’s how he got the seed money to start Facebook. But secondly, once Facebook became popular he signed a very lucrative agreement to allow the government’s Central Intelligence Agency to monitor and harvest our information. You think that’s a crazy conspiracy theory? The cell phone companies were giving our info to the government, why wouldn’t Facebook?

The Facebook Chain Letter goes something like this: “I know most of you won’t re-post this, but I know that my true friends will. If you really care about others…”  Really? That’s how we show we care, by copying and pasting? How does the other person even know? Because we “tag” them?

FacebookSun

Is this what our relationships and self-esteem have come down to? A copy and paste? Is that how we show we care? Thank God it’s finally defined. For years men have been trying to find ways to definitively show people that we’re thoughtful and sensitive. Now, thanks to Zuckerberg we can! Man, how did we meet and have relationships before Facebook? Geez, I may have to Facebook stalk my wife to see if she had a secret life before she met me. If she didn’t I’ll wish her a Happy Anniversary on Facebook.

All these years I thought Zuckerberg was a complete tool! Oh wait, he is. But he’s a complete tool with about a billion dollars of government money in exchange for our lives. He created a website because he didn’t know how to have real, human relationships. He has single-handedly ruined the world. Now relationships are created and judged by likes, shares, and comments. Maybe that’s the way it should be. How many of us have had relationships where we wished we could have researched our partners history first? See? We’re all acting and thinking like Zuckerbergs now! (also, I am hereby copyrighting the phrase “Zuckerburger” just in case I decide to open a Facebook themed burger restaurant)

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But back to the chain letter…I’m pretty sure that some code is woven imperceptibly into the text that allows a government server to reach into and monitor our Facebook posts, connections and activity. No, they don’t read everything we write or do. They have filters that are set to detect certain words or themes. Don’t worry. If you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about!

How do you feel about the possibility of the government monitoring your online or electric communications? Some people that oppose it talk about our civil liberties and privacy. I don’t really mind. If it keeps another 9/11 from happening I’ll cc all my texts and email straight to the government if they want. I’m pretty sure that my life probably bores the crap out of the people looking for terrorists or criminal activity. Of course the fact that I linked to the C.I.A.’s website and followed Edward Snowden on Twitter today probably raised some eyebrows somewhere. I just want to say a big Happy Saturday to all my new readers from the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the N.S.A.! Thanks for all you do to keep us safe. Just don’t let your supervisor see you reading #ThePhilFactor at work.

If you enjoyed The Phil Factor and wanted to spread it like a chain letter please share by hitting the Facebook, Twitter, or re-blog buttons below.  Have a great Saturday!

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Posted in Humor, pop culture, Relationships, Social Media

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