Why I Hate The New Facebook

I was once in an exclusive Internet club called Facebook.

When Facebook first broke onto the scene, everybody I knew was still using Livejournal, and my more web-savvy peers all reluctantly had Myspaces, but only because you needed a profile to stalk other people's profiles properly.

At first Facebook was only available at certain universities, and for the most part, you could only view the profiles of people from your own school. What seemed like a limitation, however, became the perfect tool for allowing personal information to be shared.

It made contact more simple. It wasn't just a website, it was a tool, and it made my social interactions in college less awkward than they needed to be. Everything from running a club to throwing a party could be done in one place.

But this social Garden of Eden couldn't last for long. Like all great places on the Internet, Facebook gained popularity and opened up to the global network. My little clique of schoolmates expanded to include jerks I knew in high school, a manager and co-worker from my place of employment, and an estranged and awkward ex-girlfriend.

As everyone and their mother's best friend's son who you used to play with on occasion as a kid joined Facebook, the need to advertise seemed justifiable. That much web traffic was costly. It was a small price to pay for such a unique social tool.

A small advertisement, tailored to your interests, was barely asking much, and we nodded our heads and said, "Yeah, okay Mark Zuckerburg. We'll give you a little bit of money because you're doing a good job. I'm efficiently stalking everybody I ever knew around the clock, and that's one addictive drug."

But like all drug dealers, Mark Zuckerburg was just starting us out on the gateway stuff.