Death by Entropy
Facebook is a great platform to reach a global audience — if you have a fat wallet. If you do not, you can heal your street fighter tear gassed eyes with a McDonald’s strawberry shake.
A clear sign that you might be a promising candidate for next year’s Facebook pop idol is when you get this message from them:
“Your Page’s post is performing better than 95% of other posts on that page. Promote it to get even better results.”
This is almost as promising as getting a mail telling you that you’ve just won a Million Dollars. “Better than 95%” means that you do have the potential to get more than ten likes and two shares. Maybe one hundred, hey maybe 100,000! It all depends on your budget. Facebook’s algorithm will not let your post grow by itself. You may think that your Friends and Likers should see everything you post. You may become angry as you find out that the game is rigged. Organic growth is dead. Is organic reach dropping because Facebook is trying to make more money?
“No. Our goal is always to provide the best experience for the people that use Facebook. We believe that delivering the best experiences for people also benefits the businesses that use Facebook.”
– Brian Boland, VP of Ads and Product Marketing on Facebook
Just don’t be one of those idiots publishing great content for free. Don’t write and wait, hoping people will come by and click on your desperate ads or even pay money to access the text that will save our civilisation. In the attention economy you pay to get read.
Facebook is a great friend, too. It knows everything about you and it still wants to know more. If you resist, it insists:
Facebook: Where do you live?
You: I don’t want to tell you.
Facebook: Where? Tokyo or Zurich?
You: Meh.
Facebook: Okay, you don’t need to tell me. Is it Tokyo?
You: Fuck off.
Facebook: Okay, okay, I get it, it’s fine if you want to to keep it to yourself. But if you told me where, your profile would be 100% done. Tokyo?
You: Leave me alone.
Facebook: Hey, it only takes a click. I’ll put down Tokyo, you can correct it later if it’s wrong, okay?
By now, Facebook might know you better than you do. Look at the medical ads on the right. If you’re over 40, watch out for ulcer, heart attack and cancer stuff. Those ads might save your life. Why does Facebook know about your ulcer before you do? Remember those apps you installed? By installing one of those mobile apps you gave Facebook access to smell your underpants. Explicitly if it’s an Android app. Paragraph 3,678 in Part 72 of Facebook Paper TOCs reads:
☑ At any time without my prior consent throughout the universe until the end of time Facebook may smell my underpants.
Why does Facebook need to smell your underpants? Will someone really smell your pants and use that information to sell you like… new laxatives? Or to make fun of you? Claiming Facebook’s employees to be that creepy is just fear mongering. Don’t buy into such FUD. Don’t flatter yourself. No one is interested in your life anymore. Facebook’s employees don’t want to see your private parts. They don’t care whom you sleep with or dream about. They don’t pin your epic fail pics on their office walls anymore. They used to, but now they have their algorithm.
Their algorithm knows your patterns and that’s all there is. If there is a ulcer, heart attack or cancer pattern in your underpants the algorithm needs to know that to show you the right ads and save your life. It’s better to know early. Forget that “private sphere” baloney. Facebook’s algorithm already knows how boring your life is behind the scenes. Facebook’s algorithm knows that you don’t have anything to hide except your boredom. Chill out. Everything is cool. Letting the algorithm sniff your underpants is good for you and everyone. You have nothing to hide.
Actually, you had to give them the right to access your contact details, phone log, microphone, messages, camera and your underpants — because, no shit, Sherlock, taking pictures, sending messages to your contacts, calling people and smelling your underpants is what the app does. Okay, maybe it’s spelled out in too much detail here and there. Luckily Google already modified the language and Facebook also changed some stuff. So what you read is old and wrong, anyway. See, Google’s Android framework works like that. You know, technically, it is either all-or-nothing. That’s just how it is. Now this all-or-nothing is not hidden behind a smart legalese as usual.
Android x Facebook is complex. It’s like Google ∀ Facebook. Don’t bother to understand their algorithms unless you have a computer science Masters degree from Stanford, a math Ph.D. from MIT and studied at least a semester of law at Harvard. You are an idiot. Those algorithms are not for you. We’re talking stuff like:
No one really knows how these algorithms look in detail, as they are a secret, of course. Or maybe not. But that’s fine. Just don’t care too much. Ignorants like you freak out when they see that they agreed to underpants sniffing because they don’t understand technology and laws and business. You did give them some creepy sounding rights, but that’s great and cool and it’s nothing new. All the other apps do it — except maybe Flappy Bird, but don’t take our word on that. It’s okay. Relax. You’re just being stupid.
You see… in order to show you only what makes you happy, Facebook conducted some sophisticated scientific psychological experiments. There are many more sophisticated scientific psychological experiments they don’t tell you about. Some might or might not involve your underpants. Ignorant hysterics like you would completely freak the fuck out if they knew everything. These experiments helped Facebook understand that you don’t want to know everything. That you only want to know what makes you happy.
“Like a room without a roof.”
You already knew that, didn’t you? And you already knew that you agreed to much more than you’ll ever understand by accepting some of those very sophisticated scientific psychological terms and conditions, written by privacy experts. They take care to not hurt your feelings. And that’s fantastic. Privacy experts lawyers and PR Jedi knights may or may not have written those terms and conditions. These terms and conditions are so well written that it doesn’t matter who wrote them and whether you accepted them before or after any experiment you might or might not have agreed to before and after you accepted them. These TOSs are so artful that they might make it to the MOMA one day — or not.
What matters is that Facebook is free for you and free to do what it wants to do with you. You need Facebook. How could you live without Facebook? You would miss the stage of that white-sand-beach-wedding-movie-life you and your friends enacted for the last ten years. Imagine you’d have to deal with reality. Real reality. Not those useless distant wars you so heroically oppose, not the psychos you hold in check with your engaged Likes and Shares. I mean your own crying kids, your lonley sick parents, and your own sad ass. Who wants to deal with that?
Just understand that your Followers and Likers may or may not see what you post. If you don’t pay for the attention no one might take notice. This is what matters. It matters because you should feed Facebook with great content and good money — so the Facebook community acts like it cares and Facebook itself continues to grow.
There are 1.4 Billion people in the Facebook community. This might seem like a lot to you, but you are a loser. To a true entrepreneur any number is just the beginning. All 7 Billion humans should use Facebook. 24/7. And they might. Facebook now works hard to reach third world countries. Facebook will make the inhabitants of Sao Paolo’s great favelas become mayors of their huts, it will bring Pinterest level interior design ideas to the barracks in New Delhi, and soon it might project pictures of sweet-water-tight-bikini-surfer-girls to the Sahara. Hungry people need Facebook more than we do. If you need Facebook because you think that your real life sucks, imagine how badly people need it whose lives really suck. Imagine this poor ragged boy from the World Cup video jingles suddenly having free access to the Internet, not needing to jump around in front of the stadium anymore. Who needs clean water, warm clothes, healthy food, who needs a life when you have Internet access?
But wait, there is more! We are talking Internet access wrapped in Facebook here. Not the dirty Internet access where folks do other immoral stuff in public like breast feeding or protesting for human rights. If you want to see some breast feeding action or and human rights activists being healed with McDonald’s strawberry shakes, that’ll cost you, sicko. Everything clean inside Facebook is free, everything dirty outside Facebook is paid, of course. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Wouldn’t that be just awesome? Wouldn’t that be just fan-tas-tic? The best part is that once everybody has access to Facebook, everybody will be able to share how great and clean and moral their life is. The algorithm will make sure that no funky vibes destroy the positivity.
You need to trust the algorithm. Write great stuff and pay Facebook to spread your love. That way you might or might not reach all your Friends, Followers and Likers, but you’ll improve Facebook’s business performance, Facebook’s stock will rise, the Facebook user base will expand, Facebook will buy more competitors, and finally the NSA has all the data to fight the terrorists on Instagram, WhatsApp, Foursquare, Hive, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Paper, and all the other competitors Facebook will buy in the future. Does the NSA need Facebook to see and listen when you go to the toilet and whom you copulate with (and then smell your underpants)? No. But it can’t hurt to have direct access to all smart phone microphones, all cameras, all address books. Especially in third world countries, in case a terrorist that hasn’t heard of the NSA, uses Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, Whatsapp to bring a plane down with his underpants. (See? Now it all makes sense!)
However, if you support Facebook, everybody wins. Brands, Facebook, the NSA and you. If you have the budget. If you lack the budget you’re just jealous.
A jealous asshole.
A Socialist.
A jealous socialist asshole.
Or an underpants bomber.
It is all the same, anyway.
Please don’t become an even more pleonastic jealous Socialist underpants bomber asshole than you already are. Don’t be an asshole, man! Don’t be negative! Don’t troll the brands, don’t hate the NSA, don’t trash the celebs on Social Media. Don’t be an underpants bomber, man. Always be kind. Being kind costs you nothing. Kindness is a great deal. You are kind to people, and people are kind to you. Or maybe not. Then get over it. Perhaps you think you’ve been treated unfairly? You could leave Facebook, like you could just leave the Internet. But since no one cares about you unless you pay, leaving might not be your best option.
Here is what you can do if you don’t have a budget but think your voice should be heard. Learn from the Nigerians. Spam up. Fight fire with fire and let a robot handle your Facebook robot nemesis. Spamming doesn’t need too much money. You can start small by just auto posting from Twitter. Add a couple of bots that retweet your stuff. You’ll have to hurry up before Twitter introduces the same selective throttling algorithm, as then you’ll be as lost as you are on Facebook. You might have a couple of weeks left to game Twitter before they game you. They are working on their own algorithm right now.
If you still believe in that indie power (lol), you can autopost to Twitter and Facebook from your own blog RSS feed (rotfl). Of course, you should write stuff on your Medium account, but make sure that it’s at least as satirical as this text. The medium is the message and Medium’s message is you — a message so close to real satire that you don’t want to be caught saying anything too serious.
Bullshitting is good because greed is good. Bullshitting about bullshit is better. Write about things you don’t understand and tell us what we should do to improve our understanding of them. Tell us how old but experienced you feel, now that you passed your thirties. People with hip problems, ulcers and impending heart attacks really enjoy that. Tell us every day in 5,000 word articles how busy you are managing your massive team and how we all could learn from you how to save time. Medium welcomes self applauding calendar psychology, too. Show them how you became so smart. In 10 steps, 10 Minutes, 10 Seconds. Post and repost links to your mediocre Medium insights to Facebook and everywhere. Don’t show us your work, show us how to growth hack your self empowerment.
Whatever you do, if you can’t buy attention on Facebook, keep on posting stuff and reposting more stuff wherever you can (yes, of course to Tumblr, and hey, even to Google+, LinkedIn and Myspace, whatever, someone might still be there — too bad they closed Posterous). You need maximum growth hacking to make up for the algorithm throttling. If you don’t have much to say, double your output. The more you say, the higher the possibility that you might say something popular. And then, since a robot takes care of your things on Facebook, use a robot to outsmart that robot. There are tons of robot services out there that will turn you into a “Social Media Rock Star in 10 Minutes” for ten bucks a month.
It’s a great game. Making chat bots chat to chat bots. Conning a con man. Spamming a spammer. Feel free to spam the hell out of Facebook and everywhere. Don’t worry about data pollution. You are not talking to your friends here, you are not being read by humans here, no one is talking to you here, we are all just talking about ourselves. Who cares. If no one notices you, and you feel like you’re being spammed, spam back. If you don’t do it, someone else will. And if robots don’t help spread your message, then at least you know that you contributed to our collective drowning in pink noise. That you were not just a victim. You might help killing Facebook. Slowly. Death by entropy. This is how you win against the algorithm.
