Own/buy your friends...

[dalekboy]

On a completely different note, am I the only one who finds Facebook applications like Own Your Friends/Buy Your Friends, kind of skin crawlingly offensive?

I'm not for sale, I am not owned. What there is of me, my friendship, love, and affection, is given freely, as it should be.

Comments

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

It got to me the very first time I got a message about it, and my distaste for it has only grown.

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

Yup. I am the same. It gives me the heebie jeebies. Worst kind of popularity contest.

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

Is this yet another reason for me to be grateful for avoiding Facebook?

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

I still maintain that Facebook is worth it (for me) for the dozen or so people who had completely dropped out of my life years ago, and we've now refound one another.

I usually only go on Facebook when I'm too tired to do anything useful, and delete most application thingys.

[kaths.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do very few of the application thingies. I had a go of a few of them when I first joined up, then got bored!

[sootysmudge.livejournal.com]

Sounds weird to me, but then l just avoid facebook completely.

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

Definitely not the only one, gives me the serious creeps. I try to ignore those as much as possible.

I also pretty much ignore any apps that exhort you to pass it on to 100 of your friends or similar.

The only reason I joined in the first place was it was the easiest way to play scrabulous with a good friend. I've added a couple of small apps since then, but mostly ignored the rest. (Even the virtual bookshelf thing which looks OK but I already have librarything to maintain)

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

That's one of a few apps that I find off-putting, though it doesn't irk me as much as the one that claims to know which of my friends has a crush on me and puts a pop-up over the 'Send' button for other functions.

I'm irritated that Scrabulous has been shut down in the US and Canada, and haven't started playing again with just my Australian friends, though I probably will.

But like you, I've found Facebook useful for re-establishing contact with old friends, so I keep my account open for that reason.

[cheshirenoir.livejournal.com]

The only app I use these days is Little Green Patch

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

To me it's just a frivolous trading card game, where all you're "purchasing" is tokens that happen to be decorated with pictures people have posted of themselves, or in one case of plasticine models ve's used in lieu of profile pics.

Myself and a dozen friends dabble with one of them - but as with most games there I try not to pester anyone who isn't actively participating.

[haircaspian.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that, since obviously it's not real ownership. I can see an issue of interpreting it as "do you care enough to buy this person", then who buys who would be symbolically important. As I said, I haven't noticed it with those apps, but many facebook things seem to try to tug at your heartstrings like that "if you care about person X, participate, otherwise you don't care". I found that annoying bullshit. Now that I consider it, yeah it is offensive that the same things are probably being said with me as person X.

[tikiwanderer.livejournal.com]

I find them irritating, in the same way that I find all the "give this to your friend" or "buy this for your friend" virtual things irritating. I dislike stuff, can't imagine paying real money for a picture of a token, and can't really see the appeal of even paying fake money for a token. I have to admit though that while irritation's my usual emotion, the one time I received a notification that "Friend X just bought you for $950!" was... just icky.