Don't Push That Button

I'm coming to you from the other side. My computer is still there but I am gone. It shows minimal vital signs and I'm hovering over its body. All I have is my IPod to stay in touch with the world and check on a few things. I'm borrowing a computer to type to you while I'm hovering. I am enjoying the weightlessness, however. I'm so thin you can see through me.

Uh, do yourself a favor and don't opt for the "dislike" button on Facebook. I thought it was real. Me. The QUEEN of paranoia. I offend people by never opening attachments of the latest funny joke or pictures of their pet gargoyle. I never look when an email says, "You've just GOTTA check this out!" even though it's from my mother. But I've been waiting for the "dislike" button on Facebook so I could use it when a friend said, "I'm so sick I'm throwing up food from next week." I figured that kind of status update deserved a dislike button. Don't you find it a little strange that you can only "like" something horrible? But this longing for common sense made me ripe for the pickin', as we say here in Farm Town, USA.

And just like that other fruit that shouldn't have been picked long ago, things began to go seriously wrong. Suddenly, my searches took me to places I'd never heard of and wasn't trying to go. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. My computer is so infected from allowing that ONE Facebook application that it will be hours and hours and days and days before Grizzly can undo the problem, if THAT even works. All of our sensitive information has been compromised and I'm changing every password I've EVER created. Because, really, what ELSE do I have to do with my life? Grizzly may have to wipe my hard drive but that's a last resort since my last two months worth of work hasn't been backed up. (Don't do that.)

I am informed by Grizzly and Hannah that this wasn't actually Facebook's application so I shouldn't be mad at them. Au contraire. Facebook KNOWS millions of people are waiting for a dislike button. It should have firewalls in place to alert them if a third party uses language that refers to anything with those words. An alert should then go out immediately to all users stating that this is NOT a sanctioned Facebook application and using it could be very risky (since the creator is obviously trying to SOUND like it is from Facebook). I may be just a country bumpkin but that seems like common sense to me. No wonder that firewall does not exist.

And, of course, I'm mad at my dummy self. I now have to shop at Big Idiots R Us. And I've lost ALL of my holier-than-thou credits. I counted on those to advise everyone around me. How will they go on with their lives now?

I've never been a good example. Allow me to be a terrible warning.


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