Facebook Event Invites Are The Most Awesomest Thing Ever … NOT!

Who’s in charge of "Usability" and "Customer Experience" at Facebook? Can I kick them in the balls? Please?

Look at the top of the right sidebar here and notice, Kevin’s Quote of the Day. Today’s quote is: "I wish I could get invited to more Facebook events that are nowhere near where I live." The sarcasm is obvious, of course, but the situation is far worse than that.

It is stupid enough that Facebook makes it easy, and in fact encourages people to invite every single person that is on their friends list to an event. I know there are some virtual events that people want cheerleaders for (which annoy me too), but the vast majority that I get invited to are actual live events happening in a real place … nowhere near where I effen live! The real place is usually hundreds to thousands of miles away. Even if I had my own private jet, I probably still wouldn’t go, either because I didn’t have the time, or I just don’t really care that much about your boring event. Aside from the time-wasting notifications I get every day, this wouldn’t be too much of an annoyance if I could just ignore them, but I can’t.

I am forced to go to the event page and Decline the invitation. If I don’t, then when people start posting on the event page, I get a notification for every single post, and every single comment on a post … for something I don’t give a crap about.

Whatever happened to opt-in?

Whoever had the idea that the default should be to send me notifications if I haven’t accepted or declined an event invitation should be kicked in the balls, and then punched in the face. If you think I am being petty, or over-dramatic, it’s probably because you don’t get many event invites. Between two Facebook accounts I get 6 – 10 a day on average. And it’s usually some self-promotional crapola.

Some people have told me that I can just turn that off. They even sent me explicit instructions on how to do so. Guess what? It didn’t effen work Sherlock.

The same idiotic crap happens with moronic "apps" too. There should be a 1-click option to say, don’t send me any app request from anybody ever. A new app is invented every five minutes, and some retard on my friends list can’t help themselves from signing up and pressing the button to invite everyone they’ve ever crossed paths with, even if it was just a stranger on the street that they asked what time it is. At least I can get rid of the brainless app request in one click though.

Getting back to event invites, it not quite that easy. Nope. After you click through to the event page, and then click the Decline button, it’s still not over. You need to make a third click to Skip making a comment on the event page. I’ve actually made two different comments several times. They are as follows:

1. It would be the best day of my life if Facebook could provide an option to invite people that are actually in the locality of an event – the old rifle approach to marketing, rather than the wasteful shotgun marketing approach of inviting everyone on your "Friends" list, when it’s likely many of them, like me are no where close to the event and couldn’t come if they wanted to. I am forced to click through on every event invite, about 6 a day, every day to decline. If I do not, then I start receiving about 10 times more emails and notifications every time someone posts a comment. What a colossal waste of my time.

That offended a bunch of people, so I toned it down and shortened to just a short logical statement –

2. I don’t live anywhere near there, so not sure why I was invited.

That still puts people on the defensive. They tell me that this is just the way it is. That’s how Facebook works. What’s wrong with me? Don’t I get it?

Yeah. I do.

Facebook has built-in spam on top of spam on top of more spam, and encourages people to thoughtlessly, randomly click shit (while they drool on their keyboard) that is annoying, time-wasting, life-sucking junk.

Let’s try to turn everyone into a Spammer! Yeah! Awesome idea!

F-ckin’ Retards.