Exam season has started, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Perhaps the last four months were filled with some sort of joy and happiness, but it can't be said that it was all fun and games. For starters, the web course had seen a drastic change, and it went from a fun and helpful course, to a ridiculous and time consuming course that wasn't helpful at all.
That aside, academics is not the topic of this blog, so I'll digress. as anyone seen the new YouTube layout? It's been there for about two weeks, and the more I see it, the more annoyed I get. YouTube has changed its layout more frequently lately, because Google believes they can make it better in the hopes that they can trump Facebook. It started off as an innocent tweak, really. I never looked at YouTube as if it's a social networking site at first. I always looked at it like a video sharing site. That's all changed now.
Because the norm of society is to always be in the know of what Johnny from down the street is doing at any given time, everything is taking the form of Twitter and Facebook. People don't need to talk anymore, or share photos of their vacation to Cabot. All they have to do is put it online so that everyone can see. What I find most ridiculous is that people don't think they're loud enough in real life, so they need to broadcast what they're thinking to everyone and anyone in the form of Twitter. It just seems like everyone has to know about you right now, in spite of where you are and what you're doing. With the dawn of the smartphone, I think people have managed to take that concept and brought it literally everywhere and anywhere.
Of course, it didn't end with just pictures and simple 140 character blurbs, so that's when Facebook makes an even greater assault. Many people have Facebook accounts, and they're practically replacements to homepages and blogs. Every now and then, people do something (i.e..upload a photo/video, visited some place, liked something, wrote something on someone else' wall) and that is now documented as an event. It automatically is loaded up onto Mark Zuckerberg's networks and the whole world can see. That's the last straw really. People have wasted so much time to go on about how they're unique and individual, but here they are, putting their personal lives into the hands of Facebook and trying to grab attention. If you're so unique and individual, why do you need to join in with other people who believe they're unique and individual by showcasing it on Facebook?
That's perhaps what's gotten into Windows Phone 7 and YouTube. "Events" or anything, that is new, is now posted like a news feed. That's why the new YouTube is so annoying. It now lists everything, like a news feed in the similar fashion that Facebook is doing. Windows Phone 7 has been even FOCUSING onto the fact that it was all about having your friends' events appear as a huge news feed. While I understand that catching up with the times is necessary, can someone explain to me why following in the footsteps of Facebook is necessary? It's precisely the same reason why a lot of the population does not like the new Windows Live Messenger. This Facebook obsession has to stop. If it can't even give people the freedom to enjoy their favourite webpages, then I think it's intruding into people's lives. That alone, is crime worthy of punishment.
