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.
Comments
13 responses to “Facebook Event Invites Are The Most Awesomest Thing Ever … NOT!”
I don’t get than many invites, so I can’t empathize with you, Kevin. By most standards I am a social gadfly and people wouldn’t want me around anyway, even if just being polite. I will say that there are some interesting apps for Firefox that block most of that crap, if you’re interested. One is called “Facebook Purity” and is available in the Firefox app section.
I didn’t miss the point of your post, but I do know you use Facebook for various reasons. This app might help alleviate some of the more frustrating aspects of Facebook, however.
I’ll have to check that out, but I stopped using “Fox Fire” after it morphed into a twin of the resource sucking IE browser. Now I use Chrome, which also sucks, but not as much.
99.9% of all my invites are the same as yours. Everywhere but close to home. Admin’s could take time to review locations and select those that live close to them, but let’s face it. That would take too much time. Obviously an app for fb would fix that if you could tell it to select those that live within a certain radius of the event. Otherwise, why not just post to fb w/o the invites.
Pretty soon Facebook will fall out of fashion just like MySpace, and then we can move on to the next stupid fad.
How dare you criticize social media and all the magnificent improvements it brings our shabby lives! You are a Luddite who does not seem to care about the thousands of potential best friends you have — or could have. You just don’t realize how unfulfilled you were before Facebook. This kind of talk is…heresy! And you know what happened to heretics.
I was using “Social Media” before the term even existed. It’s called Forums. The current social media should be re-named “social mierda”. 🙂
“Social Mierda”… LOL!
Too true
What about all the good FB has done? Surely FB has already improved your quality of life in some way with all of the cool features it provides. Just look at what everyone has in common on FB, we use FB. It is bringing the world together.(Que: I’d like to teach the world to sing)
Does this mean you don’t want an invite to the Hillbilly International Possum Throw & Corncob Pipe Smoke In?
No. That one, I kind of have to go to.
With close to 5,000 FaceBook friends, you can only imagine how besieged I am with daily invites to events 3,000 miles from where I live and for causes I could give a rats ass about. But I do admit that I am actually a semi-retarded shut-in and these invites do tend to bolster my self esteem.
You just made my martini come out of my nose on that one Tommy.
Oh… We’ve never met, and your having a ‘wiz-bang’ get together in San Francisco, 2000 miles away.
Of course I’ll be there….
That’s great Steve! Don’t miss The Stupidest Event EVER either!
http://www.facebook.com/events/178125358909803/