We Need to Do Something About these Facebook Ads

Facebook just showed me a picture of a chubby pensive girl and asked me if I needed pregnancy advice. I'm guessing the implication is that when a girl gets pregnant, it's basically a coin-toss as to the fate of the child, like every womb is its own personal Thunderdome. Even if the abortion debate weren't angry and loud-mouthed enough to have people casting ballots for the sake of assimilation, I think it's pretty unscrupulous to assume that a young woman, emotionally and physically knocked up, would turn to the CIA's number-one spying tool for personal advice about her baby-killing needs.

Let's face it: these advertisements have gone too far. I hate to think that my age group is being targeted, that my personal information is being data-farmed to coincide with mindless sidebar pop-ups but it's obviously the case. When you're logging into facebook, updating your favorite movies and quotes and sharing pictures of your friends and family, there's always a corporation watching over your shoulder and taking careful note. That's not to say that their motives are necessarily sinister. Most of the time it's the same capitalistic bullshit that television and magazines have prepped us for for years. But there's something sick about the way we're catering to them, feeding our information into the system then letting it rest there for the corporate giants to binge on like the world's largest buffet line. And I mean the bad kind of 'sick,' not the Dave Collins kind. At this point, there's really no way to stop it except to speak out. I try to make it clear these days that my use of Facebook is purely coincidental. I tried writing my updates on stone tablets and throwing them through my friends' windows, but after a few weeks of broken glass and elbows I realized the convenience of the utility. There were a few months where I bucked the trend and went Facebook-free, but all it warranted was a million empty comments like "You didn't know about that? It was on Facebook!" to the point where my rebelliousness felt more impotent than poignant.

My only warning is to share yourself with caution. There's a lot of nasty people out there. Hell, I'm one of them. As soon as someone posts something that I find ridiculous, I'm the first one to e-mail it to my friends and start belittling. The gilded veil of anonymity provided by the internet is as compelling as it is illusory; we hope people are reading, but at the same time assume we can get away with anything because, really, who's paying attention? There's too much internet to monitor it all!

Catch this salmon and smoke it. This young man thought he could almost kill somebody and then make a clever joke out of it! Whoops, he got Facebook-Fucked! That's right folks, your internet info can be used to send you to the clink, and I ain't talkin' Hogans Heroes!

So don't end up like that douche. Remember that your personal profile is like your persona. You don't need to share everything. Especially at Northwestern, most of you people are geniuses when it comes to closeting your emotions and putting up fronts. Maybe keep that same interpersonal restraint on the web too, huh? (And just for future reference, try being more social in person. It'll cut back on the time you spend on Facebook anyway, dummy.)