Why I Hate Friendster

I hate Friendster. Everytime I upload photos, it's like playing Hide and Seek. Is it there? Not yet. I check again. Oh it's there. I add a caption, is it there? No it's not yet up, and shocks, where are my recently uploaded photos? They say check back later, I do, by the way how long does later mean? Later to me means after I've rechecked and it's not there, I'd recheck again to see if it's posted. After about 6 or so tries, it's there and I don't dare change the caption anymore. It's too much work. So imagine my effort for uploading 30 pictures in over 6 months. Then imagine those who have 50 photos on their profile! Those are the real Friendster addicts.

So again, I try. After all, this is a better way of using my mind instead of worrying and sitting idly. This time I try to insert images in my blog. Except when I press the Insert Image icon, the status bar says," A pop-up window is blocked". What the f_#C!! I'm smart, I can do this, I tell myself, so I try to do the same thing 15 times then try right-clicking the icon and hit it again. That does it. The upload photo dialogue box opens. What a weird application this is. Is there something wrong with the script? Has the site been hacked? Is my blog offensive? Because as I was finishing up on this same blog I wrote for about 20 minutes, the webpage disappears, along with all my thoughts previously written. This happened once before, and I tried to track back, but the page is gone. Na-da. The page refreshes suddenly and boom, the Title and Post Body window don't have a single word. This is the second time this happened to me. The first one was when I was writing about The Godfather, trying to correlate men's fascination with the mafia with their machismo. " Do not let them know what you're thinking," Michael says to the bastard son of Santino. (Interesting, right?). Anyway, just as I was getting into it, bara-bing, bara-boom! The words are gone. So when I noticed today that the page was moving to another webpage without me hitting on anything, I selected my entire text then right-clicked Copy, and said ,"a-ha!Do you think you can do this to me again?". I was right, the next thing I know, the page becomes empty, and without a trace, my writing is gone. But I copied it, remember? I'm such a fool because when I right-clicked hoping to find Paste, it's disabled. Freaking bug. Am I really that naive? Or is this a ploy to convince bloggers to upgrade and subscribe to $4 or $8.95 a month. Or maybe everytime I write a word that attacks Friendster, or press a set of hotkeys (like typing the word Why I Hate Friendster), they run the script which automatically erases your entire blog post.

I read about Joyce Park's blog about getting shitcanned by friendster because of her blog write-up about switching from Java to Php (won't bother to trace back on the real techie terms but you can Google her blog). I want to ask their customer service this question, "Mr. Adams, are all these bugs coming out because of the switch? The layout and features are much better than the old one, but it's got to be stable, you know. And reliable. Because I got to get my fix. Like my caffeine fix in the morning, my pretty girls scamper and view profiles and blogs before 9 AM in the office to get their Friendster fix satisfied. "

"5 minutes na lang, wala na ang Friendster," shouts Joyce to the girls. After all, it won't be til 7 PM til they can access their accounts again. The site is blocked in most offices, but I don't know why ours opted to block it from 9AM to 7 PM. Hey, I should count this as a blessing.
Another thing I really don't like about Friendster is that they have this embarassing feature which announces to your first degree friends (some of whom you don't really know) that "Armi has updated her Blog". I stopped posting my blogs, and wrote instead in my blogspot account and then I tried Yahoo's 360 degrees. The thing is, I still have to check on my Friendster account because there I get to write a few words of messages and im instantly reconnected to my friends scattered all over the world. I still chat using YM, but Friendster is fun. I see updated looks of my long lost kindergarten classmates, my college friend's babies, or travel photos. I am able to guess who has uncoupled because they update their profiles (and discreetly delete the picture of the ex in the photos), finally know that this person has come out (the shirt is a dead giveaway). Mostly though, Friendster has a lot of young people addicted to digital cameras and always manage to find a great photo-op. In Marketing, when suddenly everyone is wearing the same color of shirt, somebody yells, "Picture!", then everybody leaves their toxic table and waits for the click of the digicam. When somebody notices they seem to be wearing great pastel shades, it's another perfect Cannon/Fuji/Kodak moment. Walang patawad, and later on, you'd see the photos uploaded in their Friendster accounts.

So anyway, I thought this Friendster email alert feature has been deactivated so I start posting again. Then I remembered I had this Friendster alert marked as SPAM in my Inbox. My free email filters all these stupid Friendster blog update alerts, so if you're also smart you would have done this already to save us both the embarrassment of knowing we sent something that's not meant to be seen by you in the first place. You read it if you want to, but no forced mass alerts puh-lease! After all, Friendster also has that feature which lets us know what our friends have recently done to their account- added photos, changed profiles, updated blog, new testimonials. Let us click our way to our friends, but do not force feed us trash.

The funny thing is, when I do not want to think of anything, I still find myself clicking my way to Friendster, knowing my friends (and my friend's friends) will be there, smiling back at me.

P.S. There is a reason to this madness. Go figure.