Mental Beatdown

Google Plus

I have to start this somehow, so I’m going to start this book out with an easy topic: fuck Google+.

For most of you, you know that I don’t like interacting with people. It makes me uncomfortable, and most of the time I get irritated with people even being near me. So when the ever so lovely Ash told me that I needed a Google+ to be able to video chat with her from now on, I was practically over the moon.

So I made the account, which took about a half an hour. Granted, that was with randomly smashing on the keyboard to fill in my “information” and skipping every goddamn thing I could. But Google+ basically gets itself off on how “simple” it is the whole time, basically screaming “ISN’T THIS BETTER THAN FACEBOOK?” in your face the whole time. It’s not.

That was just setting up the account, mind you. That wasn’t dealing with the stupid bullshit that is actually finding the goddamn person you’re looking for. On Facebook (well, from what rudimentary knowledge I know of it), there’s so many people on it that you just type in a name and it basically knows everything about you and it’s like “Oh yeah, she probably means this douchebag here.” With Google+, everyone’s embarrassed as shit to be on it, so no one has a picture up, lest they embarrass their family. So you have to sit there like an asshole asking such fantastic questions such as “What hairstyle do you have in that photo? Oh, you don’t have one? Oh, it’s Ash with an ‘e?’ Oh, because there’s too many? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, I found you. Sent you a request. Yeah, with the dog, right? It says you have a dog? No? Oh, wait. Oh. Shit. Wait. I hit the wrong one on accident. How do I dele- I can’t? I can’t delete people? You don’t know how?” Then you shut off your phone, you close your laptop, get a belt, and you hang yourself from a goddamn ceiling fan because it’s more fun that even looking at a Google+ page.

Speaking of the look, Google+ is about as ugly as a Philadelphia whore after being beaten with a frying pan for seven days straight. There is shit everywhere, from shit that is recommended to you that you never asked for, to Google+’s own page (which was automatically friended when I joined. Fucking awesome). I can’t say a lot of nice things about Facebook (I don’t like social media for a reason), but at least it has it’s shit together in terms of aesthetics. Basically, shit be blue. That’s Facebook’s motto, I’m pretty sure. If you go in the Facebook offices, the receptionist will greet you with “Welcome to Facebook, where shit be blue.” If you went into the Google+ office (which is actually just a box in the middle of an alleyway in Detroit), the homeless man inside would say “Welcome to Google+, where shit be everywhere. Do you like knitting? No? Too bad. I added a little knitting group to your circle. Thought you’d like it. Do you like funny cat videos? Yes? What if they come up and fill your screen? Isn’t it great when the options menu is hidden behind everything else, and we automatically check a bunch of options that endanger your privacy without telling you? Isn’t that awesome? Why is it so lonely here? I haven’t seen anyone in months.” And then you kill him.

But the biggest issue on Google+, one that I kind of touched upon up there, is the fact that they automatically enable a whole bunch of privacy-invading options without giving you a choice or alerting you. I understand that it’s social media and you won’t have a whole lot of privacy, but for someone like me who is just using it for the option of Google Hangout (which you can’t use without a Google+, even if you use one of their other services like Gmail), I don’t want anyone really being able to friend me. Not out of concern for my privacy, but simply due to the fact that I don’t want to go on there and see a bunch of shit when all I want to do is initiate a Hangout. There’s about ten options too, it’s not just two or three that they automatically check without your permission. It’s like going to a grocery store and then them taking your credit card number and writing it down when you check out and not telling you, and being like “Oh, see that tiny ass sign on the door in four point font? By walking in this door, you said we could take it. I mean, we could’ve not taken it if you had asked, but you didn’t, so. Yeah. Now get the fuck out of our store.”

Don’t get me wrong, I understand what Google+ is. I’m not as optimistic as Google wants me to be; I know this isn’t for me to “connect and inform my friends in a brand new way.” No, Google, fuck you. It’s obvious that they just want to drain as much information as they can out of me before I call them out on it. This became especially when Google became a “product.” What do I mean by that? Well, in techie speak, Google has been running on separate apps thus far. By that I mean separate programs, like Gmail, Docs, Google+. These things weren’t connected until recently, meaning that you could use Docs without having a Gmail and the reverse. Google would tie your Doc to your Gmail if you already had one for your convenience, but none of that was required, and the settings in one didn’t mess with the settings in the other. But as of recent, Google has begun the “Cycle of Fuckery,” as I like to call it. What is the Cycle of Fuckery? Easy: give someone a product that they want, then say “Fuck you, you need this product to be able to interact with this product in the way that you want to.” For example, ever since Google bought YouTube they have started that magnificent Cycle of Fuckery, this time between YouTube and Google+. “But Ally!” You yell, “You don’t need a Google+ to use YouTube! Well, my goodness, your language is atrocious, dear lady. Do you kiss sweet girls with that mouth?” Yes, I do, but that was not the fucking point. The Cycle of Fuckery has kicked in, and now if you ever want to comment on a YouTube video, you need a Google+ page. For a lot of people, that won’t seem like a big deal-- you’re probably like me, and you just watch the videos instead of commenting on them. But this is akin to going to buy a car and the dealer makes you sign up with the company if you ever want to watch cable on your TV. They’re not at all the same thing, and basically it’s 5 AM and my point is that Google+ can go fuck itself right up the ass.

So yeah I’m done.

Catch you on the flip side.