Creepy Facebook Wars

Anyone who has had a facebook for a couple years will agree: facebook has become quite stalker-ish. When I started my facebook account back in the summer of 2005, it seemed simple enough. You could "friend" people, write on their walls, and join funny groups like "If you remember this you grew up in the 90s" and "Drunk Dialers Anonymous". This went on nicely for a while, and I had my addictive moments with the online social network.

Then... DUN DUN DUNNNNN... the creep-factor went sky-high, as the news feed was introduced.

Now you can see when ANYONE does ANYTHING. Rumors flew that police could bust you for your facebook activity, and drama started over "who got invited to what" and "how dare she write that about me on so-and-so's wall!"

I even went so far as deleting my facebook account, as I had decided that things had gotten a little out of hand. However, I couldn't stay away for long, and re-opened my facebook. I was addicted, and there was no quitting cold-turkey for me.

Facebook has now morphed into something HUGE. You can add millions of applications that allow you to play games like Oregon Trail, and pacman. You can add decorative trees to your profile around Christmas time and send presents to your friends (I must admit I'm guilty of this one). You can send all kinds of gifts: I have been sent drinks (Cosmos and Long Islands) and one friend sent me a plant that sat on my profile page and grew into a snowflake over a few days.

You could spend years of your life searching and playing with these applications. I decided to type war into the search bar for these applications and see what came up.

1) You can start a war among your network over blondes vs. brunnettes vs. redheads.

2) One application, upon being posted in your profile, will give you daily quotes from Che Guevara or Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", and you can send these gems to your friends' walls.

3) A war of "Bros vs. Hos" can be started in which friends can exchange pimp slaps and booty grabs.

4) You can create virtual protests and invite friends to join your Facebook war on just about anything: war, terrorism, abortion, genocide in Darfur, Burma, global warming, politics, Bush, Clinton, Obama, Colbert, privacy issues, tasers, spam, zombies, vampires or teachers in your school. "You can make a difference!" is this application's inspirational tagline...

5) War is presented as a game that you can play with your friends with applications such as FarmWars, Thugz Passion, Cricket Wars, thumb war, and Paintball Assault.

6) The news update application allows for bulletins about the current war in Iraq.

7) And of course, one can add the classic war card-game app. that allows you use the web to play this mindless game of our childhood.

Is it just me, or have we become desensitized to the thought of war in our everyday lives?