2008-01-16 - 4:34 p.m.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

‘I despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business describes itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you".'

We learn at this early juncture that the author doesn’t like success or America. This is good to know as it means that the rest of his diatribe can be read as comedy. What a relief, I could do with a chuckle. Hostility to success is one of the more curious elements of the leftie mindset and one that is never fully explained beyond earnest teeth grinding and grumbling about 'inequality'. Disliking America is trendy these days, often practiced by the type of people who think Banksy’s witless vandalism is ‘subversive’ and ‘edgy’. After all, those upstart Yanks do force Coca Cola and hamburgers down our superior maw.

‘But hang on. Why on God's earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California?’

Obviously, one doesn’t need a computer to connect with the people around one. It can help, though. You could just drink water straight from the tap, but using a glass is rather more elegant. Similarly, one’s relationships don’t HAVE to be mediated by those dreadful supergeeks (not just any old geeks!) in horrible, distant, California. Nobody is forced to use Facebook, although apparently Guardian readers need to be told this.

‘What was wrong with the pub?’

It may also sound strange, but going to the pub is still a viable option for Facebook users. I particularly relish discussing the trivialities of social networking sites with real human beings over a pint of Guiness. Wacky!

‘And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.’

Ah, this old canard. Similar terror must have been stuck when the postal service emerged: Hang on, we can just write to people instead of sailing across oceans to greet them in person! Let’s all become alienated at once! He’s right though, it is awful being sent amusing photos instead of being asked to dance. As for the ungrammatical notes, that says rather more about the author and his friends than it does me and mine. Quite why our crusader feels the need to chain himself to his desk is something of a mystery, though. It is also unclear why Facebook can only be used at the Dickensian ‘workstations’ rather than, say, on a waterproof laptop in a Jacuzzi while being sucked off by Susie Dent. Personally, I’m relieved that on those rare occasions when I have no wish to dance with my friends, that spending time online while drinking my tipple of choice is an option. An option, that is, not a categorical imperative.

‘Facebook appeals to a kind of vanity and self-importance in us, too. If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in order to get sex or approval. ("I like Facebook," said another friend. "I got a shag out of it.") It also encourages a disturbing competitivness around friendship: it seems that with friends today, quality counts for nothing and quantity is king. The more friends you have, the better you are. You are "popular", in the sense much loved in American high schools. Witness the cover line on Dennis Publishing's new Facebook magazine: "How To Double Your Friends List."’

Don’t you just hate things that appeal to our vanity and self-importance, like, well, everything we choose to buy. Sex and approval are also dangerous commodities that should under no circumstances be obtained through skullduggery. This is how the human race survives. If quantity was all that mattered for friendships in this dehumanising digital age, then the eight people I call friends on Facebook would be a mocking monument to my social ineptitude. How I wish I had more! Why don’t they add me? Then we have another pop at America – apparently American high schools love popularity in a sinister sense alien to our own altruistic young scholars. Man, I need to subscribe to that magazine!

‘It seems, though, that I am very much alone in my hostility.’

Baffling.

‘ At the time of writing Facebook claims 59 million active users, including 7 million in the UK, Facebook's third-biggest customer after the US and Canada. That's 59 million suckers, all of whom have volunteered their ID card information and consumer preferences to an American business they know nothing about.’

Know nothing about? Fuck off, you arrogant cunt. You’re starting to annoy me now. How dare you presume what Facebook users know about the company they keep. Why is it necessary to constantly remind us that this is an ‘American’ business, anyway? Does the sentence lose its seismic impact if consumers were (oh, Jesus) volunteering their ID card information to a mere business, rather than one based in that hotbed of greed and mind control? Not that anyone has, anyway. They may take my email address, but they’ll never take my freedom!

‘Right now, 2 million new people join each week. At the present rate of growth, Facebook will have more than 200 million active users by this time next year. And I would predict that, if anything, its rate of growth will accelerate over the coming months. As its spokesman Chris Hughes says: "It's embedded itself to an extent where it's hard to get rid of."
All of the above would have been enough to make me reject Facebook for ever. But there are more reasons to hate it. Many more.’

I’m still waiting for one reason. This guy doesn’t like things that grow. Odd.

‘Facebook is a well-funded project, and the people behind the funding, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, have a clearly thought out ideology that they are hoping to spread around the world.’

Well-funded? Clearly thought out? World-wide? Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ! Funded not just by capitalists, but their most sinister and shadowy form: the venture capitalists. Don’t go thinking that just because they sound like Indiana Jones that they’re a force for good. Remember, kids: venture is bad.

‘Facebook is one manifestation of this ideology. Like PayPal before it, it is a social experiment, an expression of a particular kind of neoconservative libertarianism.’

Equating neoconservatism with libertarianism, there. Why not? Facts are never conductive to ill-informed paranoid ramblings, after all. I’m glad Paypal has been roped in, though. The convenience with which it is now possible to pay for products of my choosing is a constant headache.

‘On Facebook, you can be free to be who you want to be, as long as you don't mind being bombarded by adverts for the world's biggest brands. As with PayPal, national boundaries are a thing of the past.’

How we as a race mourn the loss of national boundaries. How life must have been better when the only way to reach dark-skinned savages was to meander across oceans in scurvy-riddled ships. Brands are a dreadful development, too. I’m glad the Guardian is anonymous… Oh bugger.

‘Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook,’

Now we get to the nitty gritty of this alarming cover-up that threatens our…. well, I don’t know exactly what it threatens, but it must threaten something, right? I mean, there are only three board members! That’s fucking scary. Three board members. Woah. Not only does this trio appoint a photogenic cover boy for its devious machinations, but they’re venture capitalists from Silicon Valley to boot!

‘and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners (more on him later). Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook when Harvard students Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz went to meet him in San Francisco in June 2004, soon after they had launched the site.’

What a scumbag, investing his own money like that. This venture capitalism stuff is clearly demonic.

‘Thiel now reportedly owns 7% of Facebook, which, at Facebook's current valuation of $15bn, would be worth more than $1bn. There is much debate on who exactly were the original co-founders of Facebook, but whoever they were, Zuckerberg is the only one left on the board, although Hughes and Moskowitz still work for the company.
Thiel is widely regarded in Silicon Valley and in the US venture capital scene as a libertarian genius.He is the co-founder and CEO of the virtual banking system PayPal, which he sold to Ebay for $1.5bn, taking $55m for himself.’

Great, I’m happy for him. Wish I could come up with useful stuff that people wanted to buy. But then, alas, I’m no libertarian genius. I do concede, however, that the two qualities often go hand in hand.

‘He also runs a £3bn hedge fund called Clarium Capital Management and a venture capital fund called Founders Fund. Bloomberg Markets magazine recently called him "one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the country". He has made money by betting on rising oil prices and by correctly predicting that the dollar would weaken.’ He and his absurdly wealthy Silicon Valley mates have recently been labelled "The PayPal Mafia" by Fortune magazine, whose reporter also observed that Thiel has a uniformed butler and a $500,000 McLaren supercar. Thiel is also a chess master and intensely competitive. He has been known to sweep the chessmen off the table in a fury when losing. And he does not apologise for this hyper-competitveness, saying: "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser."’

So he’s a rich dude with a (uniformed!) butler who doesn’t like to lose at chess. I am uncertain why these revelations should concern me.

‘But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist.’

Well, I should jolly well think so, too. He’s also a human being with hopes, fears, dreams….

‘He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist.’

Oh. How awful.

‘A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the "multiculture" led to a lessening of individual freedoms.’

Well, he’s got a point. Of course, to deride ‘multiculturalism’ is to mark oneself as a bigoted Alf Garnettt type who doesn’t like the nig-nogs taking all our jobs. Let us not dwell on this complex and divisive issue, though: we have an idiot to mock!

‘While a student at Stanford, Thiel founded a rightwing journal, still up and running, called The Stanford Review - motto: Fiat Lux ("Let there be light"). Thiel is a member of TheVanguard.Org, an internet-based neoconservative pressure group that was set up to attack MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group that works on the web. Thiel calls himself "way libertarian".’

A right wing journal still up and running? Gosh, you’d think the Liberal Enlightenment would have put paid to such ghastly pamphlets. Way libertarian? Sounds like a guy I’d like to have a beer with.

'TheVanguard is run by one Rod D Martin, a philosopher-capitalist whom Thiel greatly admires. On the site, Thiel says: "Rod is one of our nation's leading minds in the creation of new and needed ideas for public policy. He possesses a more complete understanding of America than most executives have of their own businesses."
This little taster from their website will give you an idea of their vision for the world: "TheVanguard.Org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us."’

Those bastards! A free market and a cap on the power of the state – I suspect I’m not alone in shuddering at such a wacko ideology. As for helping the poorest among us, well, if that doesn’t just add insult to injury. After all, everyone knows that the only way to help the poor is to throw money at them in the form of welfare. At least it means they can save up for some bootstraps, if they lay off the Buckfast for a while.

‘Their aim is to promote policies that will "reshape America and the globe".’

Surely this is what you want, if America is so terrible, you cretin?

‘TheVanguard describes its politics as "Reaganite/Thatcherite". The chairman's message says: "Today we'll teach MoveOn [the liberal website], Hillary and the leftwing media some lessons they never imagined."
So, Thiel's politics are not in doubt.’

And to think I was going to send them my ‘ID information’! Thank heavens we have such fearless, muckracking journalists to uncover the, erm, open and honest politcal allegiances of businessmen.

‘What about his philosophy? I listened to a podcast…’

A podcast! What happened to listening to natural sounds in harmony with our loved ones as field mice frolicked in the cornfields? Damn that Steve Jobs and his sinister attempts to rape our auditory freedom!

'…of an address Thiel gave about his ideas for the future. His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes' famous characterisation of life as "nasty, brutish and short", and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature.’

Seeing as nature routinely kicks our ass with hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes and sleet, I’m rather looking forward to a time when we can ‘conquer’ it. Any buck I can save on umbrellas is one more for my pocket.

‘Value now exists in imaginary things.’

As it does in scaremongering.

‘Thiel says that PayPal was motivated by this belief: that you can find value not in real manufactured objects, but in the relations between human beings. PayPal was a way of moving money around the world with no restriction. Bloomberg Markets puts it like this: "For Thiel, PayPal was all about freedom: it would enable people to skirt currency controls and move money around the globe."’

And? Freedom is bad? Buying things from abroad is somehow to be frowned upon?

‘Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.’

So we’ve moved from venture capitalism to ‘uber-capitalism’ now? My brain hurts. I don’t know how much more of this capitalist expansion I can take. I’m rather taken with the notion that Facebook will sell Coca Cola to me, though. It’ll save me going to the shop. Not that I, a Britain, would ever deign to drink such foul, American, mind-control juice in the first place. No, it’s tea or nothing for me. Choice can piss up a rope.

‘Thiel's philosophical mentor is one René Girard of Stanford University, proponent of a theory of human behaviour called mimetic desire. Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep-like and will copy one another without much reflection. The theory would also seem to be proved correct in the case of…’

This article.

‘….Thiel's virtual worlds: the desired object is irrelevant; all you need to know is that human beings will tend to move in flocks. Hence financial bubbles. Hence the enormous popularity of Facebook. Girard is a regular at Thiel's intellectual soirees. What you don't hear about in Thiel's philosophy, by the way, are old-fashioned real-world concepts such as art, beauty, love, pleasure and truth.’

It’s a good thing this fearless iconoclast is here to uphold these waning values.

‘The internet is immensely appealing to neocons such as Thiel because it promises a certain sort of freedom in human relations and in business…’

No! No! Stop! I can’t take it anymore!

‘…freedom from pesky national laws, national boundaries and suchlike.’

And what laws would these be, dickface?

‘The internet opens up a world of free trade and laissez-faire expansion.’

Not only that, but it’s got nudey ladies on it, too!

‘Thiel also seems to approve of offshore tax havens, and claims that 40% of the world's wealth resides in places such as Vanuatu, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Barbados. I think it's fair to say that Thiel, like Rupert Murdoch, is against tax. He also likes the globalisation of digital culture because it makes the banking overlords hard to attack: "You can't have a workers' revolution to take over a bank if the bank is in Vanuatu," he says.’

And why would we want a workers’ revolution, exactly?

‘If life in the past was nasty, brutish and short, then in the future Thiel wants to make it much longer,’

What a scumbag.

‘and to this end he has also invested in a firm that is exploring life-extension technologies. He has pledged £3.5m to a Cambridge-based gerontologist called Aubrey de Grey, who is searching for the key to immortality. Thiel is also on the board of advisers of something called the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. From its fantastical website, the following: "The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies ... heading in this direction ... Artificial Intelligence ... direct brain-computer interfaces ... genetic engineering ... different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence."’

Sounds exciting. I like the cut of his gib.

‘So by his own admission, Thiel is trying to destroy the real world,’

He said what?! Did I miss something? No, I think I know how this article works. He makes stuff up to further some crypto-luddite agenda that denigrates modern technological conveniences out of some bizarre wish to reverse the progress that has been made by the human species in order to take us back to medieval levels of ignorance. It all makes sense now.

‘which he also calls "nature", and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer.’

Not as rich as the market for tin foil millinery, one presumes.

‘The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook's most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock's senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What's In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which "identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions".’

To quote the newspaper this was published in: ‘The US intelligence community's enthusiasm for hi-tech innovation after 9/11 and the creation of In-Q-Tel, its venture capital fund, in 1999 were anachronistically linked in the article below. Since 9/11 happened in 2001 it could not have led to the setting up of In-Q-Tel two years earlier.’

‘The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. "We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries," defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. "We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts." In-Q-Tel's first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and - with Breyer - board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: "She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century."’

This relates to Facebook, how? Also, given the comical ineptitude of the CIA, I'm rather less than panic stricken by the thought of their impending lurch into the 'information age'.

‘Now even if you don't buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information-gathering tool,’

You mean it’s an option not to buy it?!

‘there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius. Some net nerds have suggsted that its $15bn valuation is excessive, but I would argue that if anything that is too modest.’

Yeah, you stick it to those net nerds! At least you’ve come up with your own valuation based on evidence and figures and stuff and… Oh, what’s the bloody point.

‘Its scale really is dizzying, and the potential for growth is virtually limitless. "We want everyone to be able to use Facebook," says the impersonal voice of Big Brother on the website. I'll bet they do. It is Facebook's enormous potential that led Microsoft to buy 1.6% for $240m.’

Good. Maybe this will enable Bill Gates to contribute more money to vital causes in Africa.

‘A recent rumour says that Asian investor Lee Ka-Shing, said to be the ninth richest man in the world, has bought 0.4% of Facebook for $60m.
The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the programme. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favourite consumer objects.’

It is at this point that I feel a gulf widening between myself and my fellow millions of ‘addicts’ (of course it is impossible to use Facebook and not become ‘addicted’ to it, after all we’re not rational human beings or anything). I certainly didn’t volunteer my ‘ID details’ (whatever they may be) nor did I list my favourite consumer objects. It would be a short list, anyway, based largely on fermented hops.

‘Once in receipt of this vast database of human beings, Facebook then simply has to sell the information back to advertisers, or, as Zuckerberg puts it in a recent blog post, "to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web". And indeed, this is precisely what's happening. On November 6 last year, Facebook announced that 12 global brands had climbed on board. They included Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Sony Pictures and Condé Nast. All trained in marketing bullshit of the highest order, their representatives made excited comments along the following lines:
"With Facebook Ads, our brands can become a part of the way users communicate and interact on Facebook," said Carol Kruse, vice president, global interactive marketing, the Coca-Cola Company.
"We view this as an innovative way to cultivate relationships with millions of Facebook users by enabling them to interact with Blockbuster in convenient, relevant and entertaining ways," said Jim Keyes, Blockbuster chairman and CEO. "This is beyond creating advertising impressions. This is about Blockbuster participating in the community of the consumer so that, in return, consumers feel motivated to share the benefits of our brand with their friends."

Oh no, not more Coca Cola! I don’t think I can drink any more of the stuff!

‘"Share" is Facebookspeak for "advertise".’

You little code-cracker, you.

‘Sign up to Facebook and you become a free walking, talking advert for Blockbuster or Coke, extolling the virtues of these brands to your friends.’

I know I can’t shut up about them. It’s a wonder I’ve got any friends left.

‘We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships.
'Now, by comparision with Facebook, newspapers, for example, begin to look hopelessly outdated as a business model.’

No shit. Maybe if they didn’t insist on printing such utter tripe they’d increase their revenue. Just a thought.

‘A newspaper sells advertising space to businesses looking to sell stuff to their readers. But the system is far less sophisticated than Facebook for two reasons. One is that newspapers have to put up with the irksome expense of paying journalists to provide the content.’

It’s bad enough that you wrote this shit, but bragging about getting paid for it ? For shame.

‘Facebook gets its content for free. The other is that Facebook can target advertising with far greater precision than a newspaper. Admit on Facebook that your favourite film is This Is Spinal Tap, and when a Spinal Tap-esque movie comes out, you can be sure that they'll be sending ads your way.’

Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? They’re looking out for my best interests. I might have missed the new Spinal Tap-esque movie otherwise, seeing as I’m so busy extolling the virtues of Coca Cola and Blockbuster to my friends.

‘It's true that Facebook recently got into hot water with its Beacon advertising programme. Users were notified that one of their friends had made a purchase at certain online shops; 46,000 users felt that this level of advertising was intrusive, and signed a petition called "Facebook! Stop invading my privacy!" to say so. Zuckerberg apologised on his company blog. He has written that they have now changed the system from "opt-out" to "opt-in".’

Thus rather nullifying your insulting assertion that Facebook users ‘know nothing’ about the company. Although it may sound a little strange, a business must supply the needs of its customers. If it does not do this, it will lose said customers. That is the beauty of capitalism: everyone gets what they want.

‘But I suspect that this little rebellion about being so ruthlessly commodified will soon be forgotten: after all, there was a national outcry by the civil liberties movement when the idea of a police force was mooted in the UK in the mid 19th century.’

Jesus wept.

‘Futhermore, have you Facebook users ever actually read the privacy policy?’

Yes. Astonishing, I know.

‘It tells you that you don't have much privacy. Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn't it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK's? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers.’

Oh, stop it. It’s just embarrassing now.

'Now, you may, like Thiel and the other new masters of the cyberverse, find this social experiment tremendously exciting. Here at last is the Enlightenment state longed for since the Puritans of the 17th century sailed away to North America, a world where everyone is free to express themselves as they please, according to who is watching. National boundaries are a thing of the past and everyone cavorts together in freewheeling virtual space. Nature has been conquered through man's boundless ingenuity. Yes, and you may decide to send genius investor Thiel all your money,’

It’s free, you nincompoop!

‘and certainly you'll be waiting impatiently for the public flotation of the unstoppable Facebook.’

I'm positively chomping at the bit.

‘Or you might reflect that you don't really want to be part of this heavily-funded programme to create an arid global virtual republic, where your own self and your relationships with your friends are converted into commodites on sale to giant global brands.’

Fortunately, that sci-fi fantasy bears no relation to the service Facebook supplies, so I won’t give the matter any thought.

‘You may decide that you don't want to be part of this takeover bid for the world.’

I just want my half.

'For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books.’

Amazingly, I find both activities possible. Thanks for staying ‘unplugged’ though – the Internet has more than enough idiots as it is.

'Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven't read Keats' Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don't want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It's free, it's easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it's called talking.'

Talking when you could earnestly and usefully be poring over Keats? Madness, I say! I wonder which is the more beneficial method of sharing information: talking to the author of this luddite hogwash or looking up stuff on the Internet? Hmmm. Those seeds won’t plant themselves either, you humbug-peddling cuntwad.

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