I was startled, astonished and dismayed when a colleague told me she got all her news from Facebook. I thought about how no one reads news articles anymore. If something is more than 750 words it better have a lot of photos to soften the reading burden. I digress. Facebook is a way for people to connect with past friends and people one just met at a business mixer. There’s no rhyme or reason to Facebook friendships. People cycle through a series of emoyiond on Facebook and even openly air their lover’s spats. Someone may be tputing the great work of their non-profit in onr post and in the next they are breaking up with their partner of 5 years. Taking that into account it seems bizarre to me that people should rely so heavily on Facebook for their news. Apologies, for I have continued to digress.
On Facebook there are all sorts of personality quizzes that one can take. I suppose people take them for fun, to pass the time away. Despite that, I imagine some people take them seriously and feel that they are gaining self-insights.
Let me share my recent insights.
1. My gangster name is Iceman. I was wishing for something cooler. Why couldn’t I have been Serpico? However, I did consider the fact that I once fired 5 people in one day. Maybe Facebook is right and I am the iceman.
2. My personality color is green signaling that I go with the flow of things. I thought is was that I was money hungry. Nice to know it’s completely the opposite.
3. I should actually be a magician because I am talented and swift with my tricks. That just sounds like a different career, if you catch my drift…
4. Speaking of magic, my magical quality is that of having a mother’s hearty full of beauty, kindness and love. Who writes this stuff?
5. In terms of emotions, I am excited because I am a very positive person and I love everything in life.
6. Apparently, I look 16 because I have love in my heart. Love keeps one young. Facebook has discovered the fountain of youth and we still keep buying rejuvenation makeup. Sigh.
7 . I hate Bullshit. I didn’t need Facebook to tell me that but it did. Thanks for the heads up. Answer me this: who doesn’t hate BSC? Facebook may be onto something here.
All this useless information. Couldn’t we pick up a real news article to read where we could maybe learn something useful about the world? And you thought this whole time I had digressed. See, I circled back. I’m winking here. Although, sadly, there is not much real news reporting out there in the real world. That’s a story to follow.
Categories: Culture, current events, Humor, identity, Pop Culture, Psychology, social media
psychologistmimi 
You are perfectly right about the attention span or interest certain segment of reading. I have many friends on Facebook but I can’t get them to read anything over one or two paragraphs. May be I just have to keep my articles to the number of words you suggested, and see what happens.
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attention span is so short these days. let me know how it goes!
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I think depends on who your friends are. I happen to have a large circle of friends that read a lot of news from a lot of different sources – so every time I open my facebook page I have access not only to kitten videos and what not but to a nicely curated gallery of headlines, conveniently together in one place for my clicking and “going deeper” pleasure. In fact I post very little in terms of photos or family/daily life stuff. Mostly I share news. It’s the way some of us use facebook.
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true enough…
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“There’s no rhyme or reason to Facebook friendships” because FB uses the looser definition of the term “friend”. Unfortunately, at least for me, it often appears to be the current, popular and perhaps only usage of the term in our modern lives. On the upside, in relation to your post, friends, at least as I define them, will tell you whether the the stuff you learned about yourself through FB quizzes, is accurate!
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