Tuesday 20 August 2013

من امثالنا الشعبية...

الصاحب اللي ما تلقاه وقت الشدة قوله خير من بعيد تسده ...

Sunday 4 August 2013

Libyans & FB!

I don't understand how Libyans use Facebook... (warning, this is one of my 'see more' posts)

Here is a great space for people to connect, keep in touch, be as real as cyber space would permit, but I more often than not find more fake names than real ones, find people showering their so called 'friends' with fake pleasantries and a lottaaa love Bob Marley wouldn't have been able to handle!

Then the other fun aspect about the Libyan 'Face', as it is so popularly shortened, why oh why do they love impersonating other people's profiles? Starting from the name to the picture!

Did your 'friends' finally figure out that Booboo Kookoo Moomoo Libya with Beyoncé as a profile picture is not real?! Oh MY! The horror!

But that's not just it...although identity theft is not a matter to be taken lightly (Melissa McCarthy definitely did make sure to take it to the next level), this is not the only thing that is putting me off Facebook lately... no, uh uh... it starts from here, but it avalanches to much more...

The news, the Facebook pages, the groups, the silly adds on the side bar, the applications, Oui, all of it!

Let's take Libyan news pages for instance; have you noticed how they always manage to have gasoline ready to light one hell of a fire? Here I am, a regular Libyan citizen, browsing through some pages, and suddenly, I see عــــاجل, in big bright red large font!

Initial reaction, yalaaahwee, shinu fee tawa! then friends start sharing بعجالة, as well, and in the span of a few hours, your newsfeed gets spammed with a piece of news that not only is it fictitious, but also silly!

My new reaction to عــــاجل is 'Hide Post' or is it 'I do not want to see this' now?!

Joking aside though, I am deeply troubled at said news sharing phenomena.

This powerful tool, that so many news experts and analysts attribute the spark of the Arab spring to, is now erupting chaos, spreading rumors and lies, defaming good people’s reputation, and the list goes on…

I am sick of saying ‘we need to do something about it’ because if anything those past couple of years have taught us, very little can be done (and no, I am not a pessimist, I am a realist), but it still won’t hurt to blurb into cyber space…who knows, maybe one of my status will catch fire one of those days and a ripple effect will be created… who knows…one can only hope, that’s still for free!