Fifteen Years of Facebook: The Curse of the Goat
The superlative G.O.A.T — Greatest Of All Time — leaves nothing to the imagination. Being tagged as the goat, however, may induce memories of the Curse of the Billy Goat, a 71-year curse bestowed on the Chicago Cubs, keeping the lovable losers from World Series glory. Is Facebook the Greatest of All Time or is it a curse?
If you are looking for why Facebook is the G.O.A.T — the Greatest of All Time — click here. In this piece, we will muse the many ways Facebook is the world’s version of the Curse of the Billy Goat.
The Case for goat
Cursed. When William Sianis was removed from Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series because his pet goat’s odoriferous emanations, he declared “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” The curse plagued the lovable losers to a World Series drought lasting 71 years.
Facebook is our curse.
Facebook changed the American mind, preying on human attention, tethering minds to gorilla glass. They ushered in an era of Surveillance Capitalism by one-upping Attention Merchants. They usurped personal data from trusting clicks and surveyed unknowing respondents.
They’ve cursed the world.
When Zuckerberg et el move fast and break things, it’s Americans that are asked to pick up the pieces. Zuck has spent his 15 years of Facebook apologizing. Wired documented his multi-year apology tour:
· “I apologize for any harm done as a result of my neglect” (2003, regret over Facemash)
· “This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it.” (2004, blindsiding users with News Feed launch)
· “We really messed this one up.” (2006, more privacy control issues)
· “We simply did a bad job.” (2007, Beacon advertising system designed to compromise user privacy)
· “We just missed the mark.” (2010, another violation of privacy, releasing data without proper consent or warning)
· “I’m really sorry that this happened.” (2018, another privacy problem)
· “We came here for the friends.” (2018, TV commercial)
This digital platform offers enough bullet points to list out every data breach, leak and spill. I could itemize apologies, blog explanations and press releases explaining how they’ll do better. There are enough articles published to cover each acquisition, leadership purge, scandal and terms of service revision. It’s all out there. The hydra of scandal and tragedy sprouts new heads every day.
Hate speech in Myanmar. Beacon. Fake accounts. Cambridge Analytica. Mail.ru. Russian trolls. “Political diversity” memo. Pixel. Iranian trolls. Opposition research. 50 million stolen logins. Portal.
Facebook is not the greatest tool of all time. It’s not the greatest platform or publisher, whichever they are claiming today. We came here for the friends. No. You came here to monetize every moment of every life in the world. An ambitious plot worthy of a James Bond movie. You even did one better, got Aaron Sorkin to write your film.
We are social creatures and lazy as dogs. If we can lie on our back, squish our rear end into the couch and spy on the lives of others, we’ll do it. We like Likes. All 7 billion of us love an atta-boy.
Facebook has already claimed one-third of global eyeballs. And then what? With no more customer growth, they will seek new markets. If they start counting robots as customers, well, they’ve entered an infinite growth curve. They’ve already showed they can pass the Turing test when they submitted their Mark Zuckerberg bot to testify in Congress.
I think Facebook, who wants so desperately to avoid a Kodak-like fall from monopoly, will continue to buy up new inventions to feed its vampire soul. Buying out founders of Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus serve only to feed its Transylvanian existence.
We can chat anywhere. Read news anywhere. Like things all day long. We don’t need Facebook. But much like the New England Patriots making half of Superbowls this century and winning a third of them (after snuffing out the Rams on February 3rd), Facebook will continue to do what they want regardless of how we feel about them. This curse, much like the Curse of the Billy Goat, may plague us for 75 years.
Facebook is a virus spreading across the world, replicating its DNA into every soulless device and infecting every human mind. Its data vacuum Hoovers and stores the Who, What and When every moment of every day. Such detailed data journalism could be used for the greatest encyclopedia of human psychology ever created. Instead it pumps up quarterly profits. We see the way they went. May the curse of the goat be broken. Please. For the sake of America. End the curse of The Facebook.
