Facebook is the Whore of Babylon

As I've alluded to briefly in previous entries, I'm looking at doing some band management and have been talking to Steve Messina and his band Blow Up Hollywood about being their European agent. This in-turn led me to spend the first quality time I have with old buddy Pat Fish in nearly 20 years (oh, how time flies). Pat was very good at suggesting a huge bunch of people for me to get in contact with, via Facebook and I duly started to add these people to my portfolio of friends, except... At 20 it stopped me and suggested that I a) might be a spammer, b) might not know these people and c) that I was blocked from making any more friend requests for 2 days.

I stared at the screen in slight disbelief, but having realised a long time ago that attempting to contact Facebook is a bit like trying to win two legal battles against Mark (He's a complete cunt) Zuckerberg - it just ain't going to happen. So, I opted to wait the two days, in fact, I waited three, to be on the safe side. The block is essentially still in force - it's changed a degree since Tuesday; it now blocks 50% of the people I want to befriend - these include The Roadmender (a building that houses gigs) and a Record Company (that produces and sells music) claiming these 'venues' either have too many friends already or too many friend requests! WTF?

The other 50% is a little easier, of sorts. I click on a name - let's say Andy S. Kank, someone I've met in the past, someone who shares 13 mutual friends with me and I get a form to fill out asking how I know the person I'm attempting to befriend, what his relationship with me is, am I befriending him at the request of someone else or is this just a 'blind' request. In fact, I'm asked almost as many questions as there are on a Housing Benefits claim form. After filling one of these in and sending an incredible indignant message to Facebook, I clicked on another name and was faced with exactly the same process. For the 30 odds people I could do with contacting and who might find it beneficial to them if I could contact them, I've been stopped or given such an obstacle that I don't actually want to now...

The annoying thing is, a few months back I was banging on about people befriending complete strangers just to allow them power ups in stupid fucking Facebook applications and games. I could make 55 'friends' when I was playing Social City - that wasn't a problem. I get 45 names from Pat and after 20 I have the fucking Facebook KGB on me like a rash. But... but... that's the point - these were 'friend suggestions' not just cold calling, click on someone at random gestures.

The worst thing is if someone tries to befriend me, I've been blocked from accepting the request. Someone I've known for ages tried to access me via Facebook last week and was told that I had too many friends requests pending. I tried to click on the confirm button and Facebook kindly reminded me that I have been prevented from adding people to my account. The irony here is that in the right hand column it regularly has at least 2 people - who I might know - that I should befriend... Bunch of worthless fucking cunts...

I am very close to being apoplectic about this. I actually don't really like Facebook (or any of the many rubbish social networking sites), but I see the importance of them and the ability to connect with people you want to connect to is the driving force behind it. Oh. No it isn't. Not for me any how...

I wonder if this is revenge for clicking x on every single advert that appears on my page and choosing 'offensive' as my reason for deleting it?