Has Facebook Jumped the Shark?
Like a tired sitcom, I reckon Facebook's days are numbered...
Folks, I don’t post much on Facebook / Meta (or whatever it’s called these days), because scrolling on Fb has become a never-ending flow of mind-numbing:
Fb used to be a brilliant way of catching up with family, old mates, current mates, soon-to-be mates, associates, well-wishers, neighbours, your stalkers, total strangers with a cracking sense of humour, your fave celebrities and any people living under your roof who’d rather chew off their own feet than have an actual face to face conversation with you.
But after spending ten minutes on it this week, I came to the conclusion Fb has finally ‘Jumped the Shark’.
Note: (for those of you born after the 1985) this is a reference to the moment in the long running sitcom Happy Days when the character, Fonzie (Mr. Cool, and his famous leather jacket), waterskied over a caged shark in 1977:
If you can’t be bothered clicking the above link here’s the GIF to save you the effort:
After that moment the series went downhill. Well, it was already halfway down the slope but at this point it really picked up speed.
Happy Day’s days were numbered, even though it lumbered on for another seven years before someone, mercifully, put it out of its’ misery in 1984.
(Although the spinoffs went on for a few more years, like zombies shuffling around to canned laughter. For those of you playing along at home: Laverne and Shirley, Joanie Loves Chachi and Mork & Mindy - that’s right, not even Robin William’s crazy alien character could save Fonzie’s day job).
Anyway, ‘Jumping the Shark’, became the gold standard for any other shows’ creative teams trying to halt their lowering viewer numbers by inserting some sort of outlandish stunt, explosion, murder or other absurd storyline, to generate ‘buzz’, and hopefully save their networks, jobs, careers, mortgages, marriages, pet’s life coaches, addictions, etc.
It usually doesn’t work (Ref: Home and Away. Every. Single. Bloody. Year!) but that doesn’t stop them from trying.
Now, back to our yarn.
When Did Fb Jump the Shark?
Well, technically, it’s still in the air.
Around ten or so years ago, the Fb waters started getting murkier until one day we realised we couldn’t see our friends anymore, and they couldn’t find us!
But the sharks were still there, somewhere, circling in the chum.
Then the Cambridge Analytica scandal popped up, revealing Fb had harvested quite a lot of personal data from nearly 100 million Fb users, without their consent.
It turns out, Zuck (that’s Mr. Zuckerberg to the rest of you, aka: Fb’s founder and CEO) has great form when it comes to being a bit of a sneaky bastard.
Way back in 2003 he built Facemash, to rate the attractiveness of female students at Harvard into ‘Hot or Not’ groupings, using photos taken of the girls without their permission after he’d hacked into the university’s server.
As you’d do, if you were rolled gold pervert without a shred of moral fibre or working conscience.
Just out of interest, I wonder if Zucky Boy rated his own dial in the ‘Hot’ category?
Well, under The Zuck’s clammy hand, Facemash (Hot or Not) morphed into TheFacebook in 2004, and Facebook in 2005, which rapidly expanded to other universities and eventually the global public in 2006,
It quickly grew to Godzilla-like proportions, pretty much wiping out MySpace, and other competitors, before causing mayhem on a planetary scale (ref: the First Trump Fiasco etc.)
Then came the aforementioned Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.
I mean, honestly, who’d have thought Facebooks’ CEO, and serial letch, couldn’t be trusted with our private data?! He’s a Harvard lad for goodness sake!
Far from being the death knell of Fb, a lot of us shrugged, said, ‘Oh well,’ and carried on.
Emboldened by our lack of interest, around 2019-20 Fb doubled down. Fb Groups (basically online societies for ‘People Who Hate Things a Lot’) were pushed heavily to keep people online and arguing for hours about political, viral and overly emotional content (most of it based on outrageous lies from paid bot farms) and, around this time, quite a lot of us started saying:
‘Where the hell are all my friends’ posts?!’
Because, my/your/everybody’s feeds started filling up with ads, suggested posts, reels (Note: if you’re not on Fb, and some of my readers aren’t - and we’ve taken down your names people - reels are short form videos around half a minute long) and recycled, viral, AI crap.
This was when we stopped asking ‘Where the hell are my friends?’ and started asking,
‘Why on earth am I seeing this crap?!’
The answer:
The Algorithm
Facebook actually has an ‘Addiction Algorithm’ to keep people a-pecking, pecking, pecking at the site’s chicken feed dispenser.
How do I know this? Because, this year, a jury found Meta intentionally created addictive products and failed to warn users about potential dangers. The plaintiff, a teenage boy, was awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages.
BTW: that sound you can hear is lawyers around the world convulsing in ecstasy as they queue up for a shot at the Meta Money Pit.
Plus, the young folk have pretty much vanished leaving we Xer’s to deal with the Boomers:
So, where did the young ‘uns go?
They mostly waddled off to Instagram (now owned by Facebook), Whatsapp (also bought out by Facebook) and TikTok (Chinese owned, but watch this space, it’s only a matter of time before Zucko buys it or gets Donny to ban it).
Frankly, I don’t blame ‘the yoof’ for wanting to hang out somewhere else online where their parents, grandparents, racist uncles and acidic aunts can’t embarrass them in front of the entire planet.
But Fb lumbers on, because it’s hard for businesses, creators, writers, musicians, influencers, advertisers, community groups, funeral homes, etc. who have nowhere else to market their wares since Facebook pretty much destroyed nearly every form of traditional media.
Even though it’s a crowded, noisy and cultural cesspit, it remains pretty much the only crucial tool with a marketplace reach that’s still unmatched.
And here’s my argument - it’s no longer fun to use. In fact, scrolling on Fb has turned into - work!
And once that happens my friends, it’s only a matter of time before the viewing numbers start to drop.
So, I believe many of us, who haven’t waved
to Fb have severely limited our time on the platform.
I may be wrong, I often am. Very, very often in fact. Yet, I reckon I’m on the money with this one, so I checked:
The Stats
While there’s still a whopping 3 billion monthly users, Meta reported a drop of 20 million daily users in a quarter this year.
Engagement rates per post have declined, links and text posts have dropped sharply, there’s much less commenting, sharing and interacting but a lot more users scrolling through reels then leaving.
News engagement has fallen through the floor like a dropped anvil in a canoe.
Facebook may not be collapsing, but after years of non-stop growth it’s plateauing and dipping. That’s a BIG shift and looks not unlike the trajectory of a water skier in mid-leap over a shark enclosure.
So, the Happy Days, ‘Jump the Shark’, clock is ticking down and if I’m right, the skier’s trajectory is about to head earthwards.
Again, I might be wrong, perhaps Zuck’s AI swamped, targeted digital junk mail, online nursing home may not go completely tits up, but that’s the way I’m betting right now.
In the meantime, he’ll continue fondling (harvesting and selling) our precious, allegedly private, data, information and photos, while manipulating his addictive algorithms like the low down, sidewinding, sapsucking, toxic rage-baiting, dopamine peddler he is.
Honestly, I’d quit Fb tomorrow but, to paraphrase the words of these two great modern philosophers, ‘We can’t live with it, we can’t live without it…’:
Hey, thanks for dropping by, see you next week!
Cheers,
Gb