Rory Parker’s Guide To Using Facebook

I’m not a huge fan of social media.

I don’t use Instagram due to my lifelong hatred of cell phones. Twitter is boring. I’m too deeply tanned for Gab, and my sexual deviancy is too tame for Tumblr.

I am on Facebook. I avoided using it for years, but eventually signed up as a means to maintain contact with certain individuals while still maintaining my aforementioned cellular telephone embargo. I’ve since come to embrace it. No other website gives me the access to spearfishing videos, racist vitriol, and pseudo-science anti-vax rhetoric while also allowing me to cherry pick the best moments in my life in order to foster depression in others.

Sure, they harvest all your data. But I knew that was the case going in. Claiming otherwise paints one as either deeply naive or willfully stupid.

And I don’t really care if they do. It’s the 21st century. Everyone is watching, always. I’m an open book of a human being and happily accept the fact that privacy is a more-or-less outdated concept. Go ahead and hack my webcam. You’ll either catch me staring blankly at an empty word processor page, or masturbating furiously. Have fun with that.

With the WSL headed to Facebook for next week’s J-Bay event, the Chicken Littles are out in force. The concerns aren’t too unreasonable- the announcement of the partnership was, perhaps, poorly timed to coincide with scandal. Many worry they’ll be forced to make an account in order to enjoy the dulcet tones of Turpel and company. Others are just contrarians who enjoy bitching and moaning online.

But it’s hardly the end of the world. The event streams won’t require a Facebook login. Those annoying emojis that flit across your screen can be toggled on and off. You can even watch the stream from Stab‘s Facebook page rather than the WSL’s!

And, man, there’s plenty of fun to be had for all you outside-the-box thinkers. You can use the comments to identify catfishing targets, single out the dumbest among us and lure them into buying shit off your Amazon wish list. You can use the forum as a means to spread whichever flavor of hateful propaganda to which you’ve currently subscribed. You can test the boundaries of the moderation team, attempting to identify exactly how far one can go before being blocked. (One guesses you can go pretty far.)

Additionally, Facebook brings to the table an ability to multitask the time-theft you engage in when your employer isn’t watching like a hawk. Long lull? Go click through all those bikini photos your girlfriend’s underage cousin keeps posting. Be sure and click that like button! Maybe send some romantic messages to prominent sports personalities. (I hear “send me picture of vageen” never fails to succeed.) Read up on how the earth is actually flat and why claims to the contrary are a conspiracy perpetuated by lizard-people (((Globalists))) in order to keep us from discovering the giant stash of gold they keep hidden beneath our feet.

Whatever you choose to do, please try to accept the new model. Come to recognize it isn’t the end of the world. By embracing the change we can all make surfing better, together. With enough support, and enough exposure maybe, just maybe, the WSL will achieve enough success that it can afford to pay winners of Pro Junior events, be they male or female, enough money to buy a new surfboard.

(Ed Note: After yesterday’s lapse in webcast, we’ll wait for Zuck’s frantic debugging – because the WSL is Facebook’s number one priority, surely – and you’ll once again be able to watch surfing…or a technical difficulties screen on Stab’s Facebook come contest time.)