Who isn't on a social networking site these days? I consider myself very computer savvy and an avid surfer of the Internet, however not even I really know what a Twitter is or how many calories one might contain. On the other hand, I do write blogs (obviously) and maintain my blog page, I maintain a website for my photography, I have a profile on Facebook, I had a profile on MySpace up until about a month ago, and I have a couple photo-sharing sites that I seldom do anything with. I ditched the MySpace profile when I just suddenly realized that I never log on anymore. When I would randomly jump on, I would immediately log back out after seeing that I had no messages. I thought that deleting my profile might feel a little like ripping off a band-aid, but I was pleased to find that the act had no physical ramifications.
A couple blogs ago, I wrote about a certain photo that I spent some time restoring. I mentioned that I was going to try and track down some living relatives of the young men in the photograph. I wasn't kidding. I procrastinated a little, but I was serious about finding someone. I thought that it would be easy to find at least one living relative of one of these guys, but it might prove to be more difficult than what I originally had thought.
See? I decided to utilize one of the most well known social networking sites to aid me in my quest to reunite history with present. Facebook was my choice. It wasn't extremely helpful, but it sufficed, or so I thought. I clicked "find friends" and searched the last name of one of the players on the team. Then, I narrowed the search by city, which is one of three ways to narrow it down. MySpace was better than this. MySpace allowed you to narrow it down by 10, 25, 50, or 100 miles. I would of preferred it this way, but I'll take what I can get. I narrowed it down to zero people by doing this. I tried again using another name. Same result.
Finally, on the third name, I had 21 people in Springfield with the last name. I wrote out an e-mail explaining what I was doing and intended to upload the three photos to the message. But, Facebook only allows you to upload one photo for such a message. Oh well, I didn't really feel like waiting for all of them to upload for every message, anyway. I figured that I would just HTML code them in. No such luck. Facebook doesn't accept HTML coding in messages. They do allow you to slap in a link as long as you don't attempt to HTML code it in automatically. Nevertheless, I went through the stupid process of clicking the "add a hyperlink" button and pasting my link in there so that they could code it for me in their own little Facebook language.
So, I tediously went down the list of names clicking "Send a Message" then copying and pasting the Subject line, the message body, and adding the hyperlink. I got about five messages in and, all of the sudden, I got a message telling me that I was annoying, that I was sending messages much too quickly, and that I needed to slow things down or else. I took a screenshot which you can read for yourself here on the right. If the text is too small, as with all my blog photos, click on the photo and it will make it bigger.
Incredulously, I thought, "Isn't this what social networking sites are for?" Here I am trying to connect people with their past and doing it in a very polite, non-intrusive way and I'm being accused of being annoying or something? I wasn't about to let a pop-up warning message stop me, so I continued with my messaging only to see the same message a couple more times. I continued, anyway. Then, I got another message. The screenshot is pictured here. They shut me down. I can't message anyone now. Apparently, I'll be allowed to use the messaging system again in either a few hours or a few days, Facebook wasn't sure which. Is this my sentence? I got 3 hours to 3 days in Facebook Messaging jail? Come on!
I understand protecting people from spammers, but shouldn't Facebook recognize that I'm not a hacked program attempting to send out hundreds of thousands of messages to unsuspecting victims, but instead just a mere social network member trying to be social? So, if you don't receive any messages from me on Facebook in the next few days, don't get offended. I'm just doing time in Facebook jail. Some people showed up outside, though, to protest my incarceration. I'm especially touched by their willingness to stand around out in the rain just to support my cause. I really like the guy's socks who is holding the sign with my name on it. Hopefully, the socks will get me an early release date.
Block! You're being annoying!
0 comments:
Post a Comment