Alright, for full disclosure reasons, let me just say right out that I'm a Christian. Now why would I rant about a faith I hold so close to me? I'm tired of misconception, tired of people only looking at the radical and stereotypical Christians, and making their judgments based on what they see there. Well, what if the stereotypical Christian is all I ever see, Andy? I say... yeah...so what? You know how you should judge a religion/faith? It's core beliefs....it's bare and basic. So you want to know about Christianity? Pick up a Bible and read the book of Luke, then maybe Acts. What better way is there to understand something than to go to the source? Don't judge it by that kid from your high school, or the kid in room 311 on you hall that keeps bugging you about your sins; just take the chance and check it out. I mean I've questioned my faith from time to time; wondered if I was in the right "camp." How can you "pick" a religion? With Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Scientology, Islamic ,Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, etc. (yes those devisions of Christianity are different: check out 1 Corinthians 1:10-17) Well check out their basic beliefs and I think you'll know. Now, I know some of you out there are saying 'screw all that, I don't need any of that religious poison.' Well I admire you, to believe that the universe was so perfectly created and that our human bodies were so wonderfully put together by, basically, a happy accident, with no designer behind it. You, that atheist, may just have more faith than I do. What makes more sense: a very large amount of energy and mass "made" itself (also remember that according to science, energy can not be created or destroyed). And then this some how created mass exploded into our universe and eventually made us in our world made to perfectly support us. All this was created on its own, with no designer. Or God created the Big Bang, and created man, woman and creature. That latter makes much more sense to me. So let me round up for you some basics: screw divisions, if you're a Christian, you're a Christian, stop dividing us. No 'being Catholic is not being Christian' theres WAY too many differences. Oh and most important Jesus was Lord and Savior and we're just piles of crap, but with him we can go up and hop on God's lap and be like. "Hey, whats up, God?"
Sellout or Normal Human being?
Alright, I promise to keep this one short. I was watching the Green Day Music video of their cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero." Great video, used to promote and gain support to stop the Genocide in Darfur, which is, without a doubt, a very worthy cause, if not the greatest in my mind. But I made a mistake: I scrolled down to check out the comments. Yeah, as most may know YouTube's comments are close to the bottom of the barrel, right next to 4chan. Most were useless "awesome" "cool vid" ones. One hit me though. Let me just give it to you verbatim just as BronzeEleven said it;
Alright, that was shorter I think, enjoy and check out Save Darfur
Also the here's the video:
Facebook it's a love hate thing
Alright, Facebook, I've got to come out and say it...we've got a problem. When we first got together, you where this wonderful place where me and my college friends out joke around, hammer out the details of when we were going to execute that prank and when the next kickin’ party was going to be. It was great and even more so, you where simple. Gone was the flashing, loud, color-clashing MySpace pages; you and that simple blue interface, all my friends’ pages were relatively the same layout as mine. Then you started to let others join in on the fun. I really didn't have THAT big of problem with it really, yeah it wasn't that exclusive little club for us college students anymore, but I got over it and put it to good use by keeping in contact with my younger brothers. You did make up for opening up though, you got a nice shiny make-over and a really cool new feature called the News Feed which basically took information already available about my friends and put it in a nice, easy-to-consume package. Now, I know SOME people didn't like it, they threaten to go as far as leave Facebook because their privacy was being invaded, despite the fact that the information was already available and they could remove themselves from the News Feed easily enough through their privacy settings. During this short time of turbulence, I went as far as to do something that I'd normally only do for Apple: I defended you. I made a group, I personally got into arguments with the people too thick to see the facts. Things calmed down and the News Feed lived on, all was good. Facebook continued to rock.
Then, you stabbed me in the back. May 2007, Facebook opened up the Facebook Platform, allowing 3rd-Party developers to create applications or widgets that users could add to their profile. Now, granted, in some ways this was cool; new features could be added to Facebook faster and easier by these 3rd-Parties and improve the over-all value of Facebook. But this is the internet, not real life and that means people will find a way for it to look like crap. It didn't take long, only a few days later, awful color clashing profiles were popping up, Top Friends, in my mind, being one of the worst offender to the eyes. Other horrible applications started showing up, proving that we humans and in specific Americans, are in majority awful, sick minded, and perverted people. How many different apps do I need to spank/bite/hump someone? How far do I need to make my friends scroll to get to my Wall? As a matter of fact, I think I need TWO walls and 4 different photo apps. Let’s not forget the ones that people add and then never even touch or configure! They most likely added them because they got an invite to it from their friends! Oh, and mentioning invites, that was the straw the broke the camel’s back. I get consistently 5 to 10 "invites" to add an application. I blame both sides though, users and developers, first users for actually sending it and developers that trick users into sending the invites. For instance, Jetman makes features unusable until you sending 200 invites to people. Facebook, why do you allow this? I don't know how many more "Free Condoms" invites I can stand. Now I admit, some of the apps are useful. I use “courses” and “audio” (thank you for banning auto-play), they keep in line with the standard blue interface and don't interfere. Now Facebook, this whole app situation could be simply fixed really, by making app developers use the standard user interface. You made yourself different from MySpace at the beginning because of your simple, clean interface. What have you done now? Well, I'd say the exact opposite.
Ok, Ok Facebook, I know I've been rough on you so far, but I'm not done. A few weeks ago, I was at my favorite distraction besides you, Kongragate where I play flash games for points and badges and level up as I go. Then, as I was playing, Tower Defense (that looked like it belonged to you, Facebook) a little alert came up. I was busy with the game and ignored it planning on investigating later. Well I forgot, but a day later, I was on Facebook and for some reason my mini-feed told me that yesterday I was playing Tower Defense on Kongragate. WHAT? Without my permission, you've decided to allow OTHER sites outside of Facebook to post about me. Now I know, I was asked by that little window that popped up, but doesn't this kind of thing usually an opt-in sort of deal? Yeah.
Alright I feel a little better now that I got that off my chest, but Facebook, you got a lot of fixing to do if you want me to stick around. Relationships are tough and once you commit to something, it's hard to leave. But I'm ready to, Facebook, you push and push and I give and give. I know in the end it's all about profit, but you can't make profit if we all start leaving.