You've read the posts: "Help! Timeline is coming for me!" "Me no likey timeline!" "Agh! Timeline! I'll see you in hell, Mark Zuckerberg!" We didn't ask for it, and if we had known in advance what it was, we would have begged to be spared. Since late January of 2012, like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Facebook's Timeline has replaced the Wall and Profile of each one of your friends, one hapless soul at a time. On Facebook, no one can hear you scream. As a last stand, we offer to you seven reasons why Timeline sucks, even though we'll continue to post, share, and "like" photos of cats and what we ate for lunch.
- It's non-optional: Facebook is free. Therefore, Facebook can and will do whatever it wants to with its users. Privacy? Choice? The customer is always right? Get over it. That's the Facebook business model in a nutshell. Like his hero Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg has never wasted time asking the consumers what it is they actually want. Why should he? He's made millions convincing people to accept a social networking site that is invasive, confusing, and maybe even doesn't do all that good a job of helping you keep in touch with your friends.
- Even Mark Zuckerberg can't explain what it is: You know public speakers who really aren't all that good at public speaking, but everyone just tries to be supportive, not fall asleep, and applaud at the right moments? Well, that's Mark Zuckerberg. At the official roll-out of Timeline, Zuckerberg offered one of the most unexciting and unhelpful speeches ever delivered by a billionaire CEO, returning again and again to the mantra, "Timeline is the story of your life." Watching Zuckerberg speak, you almost feel sorry for the guy — that is, until you realize Timeline is not the story of your life. It's an ugly, visually confusing collage of photos, useless apps, and personal information that shouldn't be shared with every single person on the planet.
- Timeline will suck up even more of our time: Timeline is insanely complicated. Sorting out what it does and how you can make it look a little more pleasing takes time that most people, who jump on and off Facebook a few minutes a day to blow off steam, just don't have. For all of Zuckerberg's insisting that Timeline is streamlined and visually more appealing, there are more links, more stats, more apps, and more useless information than anyone who wants to entertain some semblance of an existence beyond their computer can ever hope to "control" and process.
- Nobody wants to spend seven days "teasing" their Timeline into shape: The assumption of the part of Zuckerberg and blogging enablers happy to suck on the Facebook teat is that you have nothing better to do over the course of seven days than "tease" your Timeline into shape. By "tease" we mean sitting in front of a computer and methodically updating privacy settings, checking to see who can and who can't see photos of you getting wasted after work, and deciding if something you posted more than five years ago is really appropriate for the current chapter in the story of your life. Zuckerberg and bloggers love spending hours, even days on computers, and don't understand that there are people who don't. Timeline reflects this disconnect.
- It's a playground for stalkers: When it comes to too much information, Timeline is the ideal resource for stalkers, identity thieves, the federal government, and, of course, your mom! You know that Facebook friend that "likes" every single one of your updates, no matter what they happen to be about? Well, get ready, because thanks to Timeline, your very own sort-of stalker now has an overwhelming collection of updates and photos to troll through and "like." He or she might even download all of the photos you've posted, make a collage on the wall of their one-room apartment, and "share" a grainy and chilling photo of the results on your Timeline!
- Too many apps: You know your friend who decided to log onto Facebook with their Yahoo email account probably didn't want to share with the world the fact that they'd read yet another article about the Kardashian sisters. But there it is, evidenced on their Timeline, thanks to an "app" that further erodes the boundary between what you do in your private life and what everyone else in the world knows about you. If you find that you too are curious about Kim and her dingbat family, chances are when you click on the link, you'll be asked to grant certain permissions to Yahoo so that everyone can see the idiotic articles you're reading as well. Oh, but first, you'll have to fill out several fields with your personal information and then wait for an email confirming that you can use the app. Isn't sharing wonderful?
- You'll realize, you're spending WAY too much time on Facebook: And maybe, that's not such a bad thing. Facebook has begun to dig its own grave as more and more users commit "Facebook suicide" due to the overwhelming amount of work that goes into maintaining a Timeline. You may, after wasting yet another hour of your life trying to figure out how to eliminate that creepy "map" app in the upper right of your Timeline — the map that helpfully shows everyone where you've been — decide that Zuckerberg's vision for a "new way to tell your story" is just a front for making money from advertisers. After deleting your Facebook page, you might even sit down and, with a pen in hand, try writing in a diary.
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