The Great Big Facebook Conspiracy

I was having a ponderance the other day. It happens from time to time. I have a lot of time to think, and get an awful lot of it done while staring at the white pages in front on me that I really should be filling with text. It is both an awful burden and an absolutely wonderful curse and I love it, as a little bit of mental masturbation is always a lark.

What is more fun that thinking is completely off the wall thinking as, I will admit, that I do have a soft spot especially for conspiracy theories. Now, I'm not exactly the sort of person who sits at home refusing to use electricity because 'the man' is onto me, all the while eating cold tins of beans and wearing a tin foil hat. I'm not quite that bat shit crazy yet. In my autumn years I hope to achieve it, but alas for the moment I appear to be borderline sort of normal. Still, it's fun and pretty much just human nature to look into things – Do aliens exist? Did we really get to the moon? Was the Titanic an insurance job? Just how is Jared Allen's hair cool? That sort of stuff.

Last night, when I was once more failing to get to sleep, I did some thinking. In it, I came to the conclusion that Facebook is a massive conspiracy. Now, I know how mad that that sounds, but hear me out. I promise I'm not a nutcase who is currently sat in the bushes outside your window touching himself.

Just imagine for a minute, if you will, that you are some big powerful government man. There, don't you feel important? Looking over all the peons with a sense of unjustified superiority like that, whoa boy you sure are a big shot. But, I hear you say, what are all those zillions of people out there up to? What are they doing? Thinking? Interested in?

Also, just the other day, you happened to be having a nice informal, dress down top secret meeting with some of your bestest buddies in Industry. They were complaining that it was getting harder and harder to control the surfs, what with the advent of movable type. It was much harder to predict their patterns and advertising had become awfully broad spectrum (as anyone who has seen L'Oreal advertised on Kerrang! TV while then flicking to MTV2 only to see fish fingers being hawked will attest to).

If only there was a way to not only find out what people were up to but to also track what they were interested in. If only...

Now for the conspiracy bit – I really do have a hard time believing that something like Facebook sprung up all by itself. I mean, no doubt that the guy\guys (depending on which legal POV you take) who dreamt it up in Harvard did have nout but the best intentions for it at the time, but I find it a struggle to believe that in 4 years a business can go from helping a few Uni students keep in contact to gaining a massive, multi-billion dollar user base. Think of all the personal information that is kept on Facebook – they can word filter what you are thinking, track what you click on, see where and how you update and so on and so forth. And I mean sure, although it is not done obviously, Facebook does sell data. If I had a wager on it, I'd bet that that data was not just stuff to advertisers to see if you would prefer a red or green car...

But anyway, as I've shown already if I put money on it I'm usually wrong.

Assuming I haven't been hauled away in the dead of night, see you Sunday!

11 Predictions for 2010

Holy freaking meatballs, it's another year. I swear it only turned 2009 a few weeks back. Where did that year go? Where did any year go? Oh my god my birthday is in a few weeks and I'll be...

Anyway, hello. Welcome back. Did you have a good Christmas? Get lots of nice presents? Hope you didn't get a crappy jumper. That would suck. Hey, you know what would be fun? Seeing as how this is a new year and everything, let's have some predictions.

I hereby present my Top 11 Predictions For 2010

1. Somehow Labour will find a way to remain in power. Those guys are literally like vampires. They just will not die while sucking everything you have in the meantime. I think the only way to remove Gordon Brown and is coven from this earth is to go at him with a garlic laced spike.
2. Apple will help Sony in their battle against Microsoft. Lets face it, the video games and general recreational electronics market at the moment is massive. Apple can focus all they want on iPods and iPhones and iDontcares, but you know they want to overtake Microsoft as the number one computer company out there. Along the same lines, Sony will want their PlayStaion brand to beat out the Xbox one. What with a common enemy, those two have to have some middle ground.
3. Terry Wogan and Bruce Forsyth will fight to the death for the title of 'Britain's Grandad'. In one corner you have the softly spoken tubby fellow who will give you a Worther's Original, while in the other you have the cheeky wiry one who will tell you what your young mind conceives are a rude joke. Who will come out on top?
4. Formula One will allow drivers to listen to BBC Radio 2 while racing to give Schumacher a middle aged pastime.
5. Brett Favre will retire, un-retire, retire and then sign to pitch for the NY Yankees because his career just isn't complete without a World Series ring.
6. On another NFL theme, Peyton Manning will continue his transition into the role of 'comedic straight man.' Honestly, that guy can say the most serious sentence in the world and it's funny. Although that might just be his nose. Related – Owen Wilson will sue Peyton Manning over copyright infringement on comedic noses.
7. England will scrape through the group stages of the World Cup, win in the second round and then just as we as a country get some self belief, get knocked out on penalties in the quarter finals.
8. I'll get turned down for a US Green Card for the third straight year. All I want is to be able to stay in the States for more than 6 months at a time. Is that so much to ask?
9. Wayne Rooney, in the process of trying to teach his baby son new words, will have his vocabulary increase exponentially.
10. I will finally give in and fly all the way to Canada just to see a Colin Mochrie stand up gig. Related - Colin Mochrie will take out a restraining order against me.
11. Finally, I'm willing to bet nothing changes. Taxes will be too high, pay too low, we will all be scared about the nasty man in the shadows who wants to kill us to death and we will hide away from all this in a nice, warm cosy materialistic home pouring controlled poison down our necks. Because that is human nature.