Why Do People Still Use Facebook?

I was out for drinks the other day with a few friends from my hometown who were visiting New York City for the weekend. One of them started talking about a party they were having next weekend, to which I replied, “What party?” They responded, “What, you didn’t see my invite on Facebook?” ‘
Umm, no, I didn’t see your invite on Facebook because I haven’t been on Facebook for more than 30 seconds in, like, the past two years.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: what kind of dude creates Facebook events? You’re right, dudes don’t create Facebook events, but chicks do, and this friend was a chick. Chicks like to plan things out weeks in advance, while dudes will just send out a text the day of the party reading, “Yo, having people over, come through, bring booze, bring whomever.” You’re probably also thinking: hey Jimmy T, anything happen between you and this chick later that night? The answer is no, no it did not. It was a couples thing, and I don’t think anyone else at the table watches as much porn as I do, so the night was pretty standard. Anyway, this isn’t about the event-planning habits of guys and girls, it’s about Facebook. Why was my friend surprised when I told her I hardly ever use Facebook anymore? Why, in the year 2014 and a half, does anyone still use Facebook?

Back in 2005, I was a soon-to-be college freshman and was first introduced to Facebook. It was back when you still needed an actual college email address to register for the site. I vividly remember the summer before my freshman year, sitting on Facebook for hours at a time and sending friend requests to every hot incoming freshman girl, laying the groundwork for having sex with absolutely none of them over the next four years. Even then, the reasons for Facebook’s existence were clear: Creep on hot girls at your school and throw up funny statuses now that the glory days of AIM were waning. And for the subsequent few years after Facebook’s inception, the motives were still pretty much the same: creep on hot girls both at your school and ones you lost touch with from high school who were now at other schools, and post funny statuses now that AIM had completely died.

And then something happened. Someone invented a website where you could try to be as funny and clever as you wanted, only you had to limit your brilliance to 140 characters or less, which was genius because some people’s Facebook statuses had become their own personal novels. Not only that, you could even interact with celebrities! You couldn’t interact with celebrities on Facebook unless you were actually friends with that person, in which case you probably didn’t care about being entertaining on social media. The days of posting Facebook statuses had come and gone, replaced by the “@” symbol and #hashtags.

And then something else happened. Smart phones became the norm, and someone created a free app for these smartphones that weeded out all the political bullshit, weird farming games, and opinions of people you didn’t even talk to anymore, and just gave you what you wanted when you joined Facebook in the first place: pictures of hot chicks. Not only that, pictures of hot celebrity chicks, too! And with that, the days of scrolling through the 55-picture “**CABO SUMMER 2009!!**” Facebook album of the hottest chick from your high school had come and gone, replaced by only the five or so pictures from that album that she thought she looked the best in, filtered to perfection of course.

While Twitter and Instagram had managed to master the two best things about Facebook, Facebook was busy Candy Crushing and baby-picturing is’s way out of my life for good. So I started logging in once a day. Then once a week. Then once a month. And now? Only when I accidentally click the app on my phone because I have fat fingers. Seriously, nothing on Facebook appeals to me anymore. Twitter blows Facebook away when it comes to keeping up with current viral stories and your friends’ clever one-liners, while Instagram is obviously king in the photo-sharing world. So again, I ask, why does anyone still use Facebook?

At this point, Facebook is utterly useless. I mean, I understand they’re still like a gazillion, fafillion, shabba-do-dillion dollar company and bought Instagram, so ipso facto when I’m looking at Instagram I’m looking at Facebook, but don’t you think they bought Instagram for another reason other than Mark Zuckerberg wipes his ass with trillion dollar bills? They bought Instagram because they know they suck now. They know the only people posting pictures on Facebook these days are new moms and the weird guy you worked with at your first retail job, and nobody wants to see those. They know the only people still posting statuses on Facebook are the ones who still think 9/11 was a hoax and who blame Obama every time they get diarrhea. And they know the only people who still write on other people’s Facebook walls are serial killers. Seriously, when’s the last time you or someone you know posted something on someone’s wall that wasn’t “Happy Birthday!”? That’s what Facebook has become now, a really elaborate website that tells you about birthdays. It’s like the Seinfeld episode where Jerry gets his dad a Wizard organizer and his dad only uses it to calculate the tip at restaurants. I’ve got Zuckerberg screaming at me “IT DOES OTHER THINGS!!”, but all I care about is the upper right-hand corner that tells me birthdays so I don’t become a bad friend.

Sorry Mark, but there are other websites and apps that do those other things better. If I want to creep on girls, I’ll go to Instagram. If I want Metta World Peace’s opinions on foreign affairs, I’ll head over to Twitter. If I want pictures of my friends shitting, I’ll open Snapchat. And if I want to live vicariously through my single friends, I’ll open Tinder. But the next time I open Facebook won’t be until sometime in December, because I know my dad’s birthday is somewhere around there, and I’m gonna “remember” the shit out of it.

PS – I’m well aware of the irony that will come from this article being posted on the BroBible Facebook page.